[Bae Su-kyeong] What a snowflake knows: dignity in quiet presence

Some months ago in Seoul, I walked through streets that had fallen silent after midnight. The snow from the night before had hardened into ice, and on the frozen asphalt sat several dozen people. There was no chant, no fist, no act of violence. Only silence.

In the deep shadows where no streetlight reached, I noticed a young man sitting cross-legged. On the frozen ground before him lay an open Bible. He seemed to have deliberately chosen the place where not even a trace of light could find him. Simply being there, he faced the darkness with nothing but prayer, despite the uncertainty of what lay ahead. His conviction in human dignity, guided by his inner voice, seemed to draw him to the loneliest corner of the world on that bitter winter night.

That image has lingered with me as I follow events around the world. From Germany's mass protests in January 2024 against racial and ethnic hatred to the marches decrying austerity policies in Paris to the ongoing gatherings across American cities, citizens are present in the face of intolerance, inequality and the erosion of democracy.

Their faces often remain unseen, their existence easily overlooked or dismissed as noise or disturbance. Yet within their being lies something essential, the quiet voice of conscience. It speaks when one dares to turn inward and listen.

Seen together, these moments evoke what Martin Heidegger called “Dasein,” a term he used to describe human existence. It refers to the condition of simply being there. We find ourselves already thrown into the world, yet remain free to choose how to live within it. The silent call that awakens this freedom, in Heidegger’s view, is the call of conscience. Within this openness of choice, we are not fixed beings but unfolding possibilities. To live authentically, then, is to take responsibility for one’s own being and listen to the call that draws us back to ourselves.

Some years ago, after closing the last page of Orhan Pamuk’s novel “Snow,” I buried my head on the desk and wept for a long time. It was the darkest hour before dawn. I could not yet know what had moved me to tears. But now I do. It was beauty.

The novel “Snow” is set in the city of Kars, torn between the sacred and the secular. The story unfolds within an isolated world where a mosaic of people, each carrying their own truth, collide and converge. There is a girl who removes her headscarf on stage, those who die for their beliefs, the soldiers who enforce order, and even the silent ones who simply endure. Each of them, in their own way, tries to listen to the voice that awakens them to who they truly are and who they might yet become.

The protagonist, the poet Ka, stands at the center of this storm. He is portrayed as a fragile and tragic soul adrift in the tide of time and fate, longing to live apart from the city yet unable to free himself from it.

But he is not merely a passive victim of history or belief. Within himself, he wrestles endlessly with doubting, yearning and questioning. Yet still he seeks love, truth and the possibility of becoming. In his striving lies an openness toward his own freedom, the possibility of living as himself. And that is why he, even in his weakness, is beautiful.

I still remember that young man in Seoul. By existing on the dimly lit winter street, the man who hid himself paradoxically revealed the purest form of human dignity. For dignity is the quiet radiance of a being that does not betray itself, even amid darkness, threat or doubt.

I lift my head. It is the early morning hour when sunlight begins to spill over the world. Beyond the window, the air itself seems to be the breath of beings. They flow through time and place, creating space that is visible or invisible, yet real. Woven with sorrow, joy, despair, hope, doubt, prayer, hatred and love, space becomes the traces of beings.

Even now, amid yet another moment of uncertainty and division, the world remains open to the space of possibility, not closed. And this is why, even in the darkness of despair, I still hold on to the final lines of Orhan Pamuk’s “Snow”: “Every life is like a snowflake: individual existences might look identical from afar, but to understand one´s own eternally mysterious uniqueness one had only to plot the mysteries of one´s own snowflake.”

Bae Su-kyeong

Bae Su-kyeong is a freelance journalist residing in Europe. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. — Ed.