This is an upbeat verse of hope without a trace of the dour self-reproach that accompanies many of Yun's work. For once, Yun is looking at only the bright side of things, of the new road he'll be traveling, with all the beautiful things alongside it. We do not know the details behind this little work, like what brought this exhilarating mood to him at that particular time, but it is such a welcome diversion. While life is unavoidably an endless mixture of the bright and the dark, what keeps people going is this thing called hope. Hope is what turns the mundane into something more exciting, the boring continuum into a brand new start, and the unbearable bearable. It is the thing with feathers, as Emily Dickinson put it so aptly, what gives us the strength to continue on even in the face of the greatest challenge. And it is not distributed unfairly like so many other things in life. We are all born with a fair share of it, or so it looks to me at least.
Yun had an uplifting moment here, when all the dire and gloomy things in his life receded to the background so he could just enjoy the dandelions and magpies and everything along the new road to a bright future. Whatever happens in the end, such moments are what makes life worth living for most of us, aren't they?
Tony's Web
