It was a deep night in a rooftop room of an old villa in Seoul, where only cold moonlight streamed in through the window.
An uninvited guest arrived at the room of a man asleep buried under a pile of manuscript paper.
It was a 'thief' who had come to rummage through the drawers.
Holding his breath, the thief began opening the creaking desk drawers one by one.
But then, a low laugh was heard from the bed.
The landlord, whom he thought was asleep, sat up, clutching his stomach and laughing heartily.
Flustered, the thief asked blankly instead of raising his knife. "No, rummaging through someone else's drawer in the middle of the night—what is so amusing that you are laughing?" The man answered, wiping away the tears welling up in his eyes. "Look here, friend. That is a drawer I searched thoroughly all day long, even while the sun was high in the sky. But not a single coin or grain of rice came out. So why are you working so hard to find something in that pitch-black darkness? It was so ridiculous that I couldn't help it." In the man's voice, there was not mockery, but a strange sense of detachment and kinship.
The thief fell into a state of despondency. It wasn't so much the fact that there was nothing to steal, but that he had effectively received 'certification' from the homeowner that his efforts were utterly meaningless.
The thief clicked his tongue and turned away.
As the thief opened the front door to leave, the man smiled and added a remark.
The thief turned back in disbelief and snapped back.
"It is a room with nothing to take, a total wreck, so why do you want me to close the door?
Are you perhaps worried that another thief might break in?""
Then the man replied wittily.
This anecdote is not merely a story showing the destitution of a poor writer.
It is about the attitude we have toward the 'lack' that confronts our lives. We often feel anxious when our drawers are empty, and we lock the doors tightly for fear that someone might peek inside. But that man was different. "How could you find something I couldn't even find?" The man's laughter stems from looking at his situation objectively. Just as the saying goes, "Even tragedy is a comedy when viewed from a distance," rather than viewing his poverty as miserable, he accepted it as a reality. It takes tremendous inner strength to have the composure to laugh it off when faced with a problem, saying, "Yeah, my drawer is empty. That's a fact!" instead of asking, "Why am I the only one like this?"
The scene where the thief is asked to close the door is the highlight of this story.
It is a declaration that one will not lose the minimum boundary that protects oneself, namely 'dignity,' even when one has nothing.
He knew very well that what tormented him more than an external intrusion (a thief) was the internal cold (the night wind).
The power to make a knife-wielding thief feel helpless and send him away with just a single word was not logic or violence, but 'humor'.
Humor is the most powerful weapon that melts away the tension between you and the other person in an instant.
"When the world laughs at your empty drawer, smile at the foolishness of that world.
with the confidence to make sure the door is closed."
