Lesson 1 Learn from Failures

Failure Is Our Friend

No one wants to fail. We all want to succeed in everything we try and to avoid failure.

Nonetheless, failing and learning from our bitter experiences is necessary for success. In fact,

the most successful people are often people who have experienced many more failures than

others. One of the most famous examples of someone who learned from failure was

Thomas Edison. He was one of the world’s greatest inventors, and he acquired over 1,000

patents. Like a wizard, he seemed to take ideas from thin air. However, he also faced

tremendous difficulties. Edison is said to have failed 9,999 times before creating a perfect

light bulb. Unlike the average person, Edison saw these mistakes not as failures but as an

inevitable part of the invention process. In response to a question about his errors, he once

said, “I have not failed 9,999 times. I’ve successfully found 9,999 ways that will not work.”

Of course, he was right. He was able to achieve success after failing repeatedly.

These failures can not only motivate us to find a successful way to accomplish our goal

but also help us to grow in wisdom and in spirit. Toni Morrison began writing when she

was in college, but she did not produce anything good enough to publish for many years.

Her troubled marriage, divorce, and life as a single mother made it even harder for her to

write. At 39, she published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, which received mixed reviews

and did not sell well. However, all her hardships added depth to her novels and encouraged

her to improve her writing skills. Later in her life, Morrison wrote masterpieces such as

Song of Solomon, Beloved, and Jazz. In 1993, she became the first African-American woman

to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

 Sometimes failure can lead us to success by showing us that we are not good at

something. The fashion designer Vera Wang, for example, found a path to success, thanks to

her failure. At the age of seven, she began devoting herself to figure skating, hoping to

compete in the Olympics. When she was 19, however, she failed to make the U.S. Olympic

team and quit figure skating. She experienced a brutal letdown. While staying in Paris, she

happened to discover her passion for and talent in fashion design, which led her to move

to fashion as a career. After returning to America, she started working as a salesperson in a

clothing store. Developing her career from editor of a fashion magazine to design director

for a global brand for about 20 years, she eventually ended up designing clothes on her

own. Today, Vera Wang is a world-famous designer whose elegant dresses are sought after

by celebrities the world over.

Still, wouldn’t it be even better if we could be successful without ever failing? We may

think so, but in the end, performing without failure doesn’t necessarily produce lasting

success. All success with no failure often leads a person to arrogance and carelessness. As a

result, the always successful person or organization could suddenly encounter a disaster.

Between the 1960s and the 1980s, NASA, the U.S. agency in charge of researching and

exploring space, completed one successful mission after another with no significant failure. In

1968, it launched Apollo 8, the first manned spacecraft to fly around the moon. In 1969,

Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and the NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first

person [in historyNto walk on the moon.

During the following years, NASA successfully sent five other rockets to the moon. Even

when the oxygen tank in Apollo 13 exploded on its way to the moon in 1970, its entire

crew was rescued, and they were able to return home safely. This continued series of

successes made the decision-makers at NASA too self-assured and unable to imagine failure.

In 1986, NASA planned to send its second space shuttle, Challenger, into orbit. Right before

the launch, engineers expressed concerns about mechanical malfunctions and advised that

the launching be postponed. However, NASA managers did not take their warnings seriously

and launched Challenger as planned. Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after it was

launched, which resulted in the deaths of its seven crew members.

Edison, Morrison, and Wang all suffered big failures, but they never gave up. They learned

from their mistakes and went on to experience even greater triumphs. Like many successful

people, we should view failure not as the opposite of success, but as an indispensable step

on the path to reach success. After all, the only way to avoid failures is to do nothing. J.K.

Rowling said that suffering many failures in her life eventually enabled her to write the

Harry Potter series. She remarked, “Failure taught me things about myself that I could have

learned no other way.” By risking and confronting failures and learning from them, we can

become wiser and stronger.

Lesson 2 Technology and Life

The Evolution of the Camera

In the movie Argo, a group of American embassy staff members try to escape from a

foreign country before the enemy finds them. To prevent the enemy from identifying them,

they attempt to eliminate all the photographs inside the embassy along with all embassy

documents. While they are hiding and waiting for rescue, the enemy reassembles the torn

pieces of the photographs to find out what the escapees look like. These staff members

must leave the country before their photographs are reconstructed. This story only makes

sense because it is set in 1980. If a similar incident happened today, it would be impossible

for the embassy employees to destroy their photographs in time. There would be too many

pictures floating around on the Internet to find and erase. This example points out how

differently we handle photographs today from how we did in the past. At the center of this

change is the ever-evolving technology of the camera. From the Film Camera to the Digital

Camera [
Before the digital camera was invented, we had the film camera. It captured an

image on a piece of film every time we took a picture. Once used, the film could not be

erased or reused. To take pictures, photographers needed not only a camera, but also

film, which they had to buy every time they wanted to take another photograph.

Furthermore, taking a photograph required knowledge, skill, and practice. A photographer

needed to learn how to decide an adequate composition for the picture, to adjust the focal

length, and to set the film and the shutter speed before shooting. It was important to

prepare carefully if a person was going to take a good photograph, because it was nearly

impossible to change anything once the photograph had been taken.J The digital camera has

changed all that. Since today’s digital cameras store photographs in the form of digital

images, no film is needed. In other words, taking pictures with a digital camera is practically

free. As a result, most people are taking far more photographs than they would ever have

before. In the past, when a family took a trip to the countryside for the weekend, they

might have taken 10 to 20 photographs. Today, many families will take 100 to 200 pictures

during the same countryside trip. When they return home, they can choose the shots

they want to keep and discard the rest. The discarded pictures cost them nothing, except

perhaps a little time. Moreover, the digital camerahas made it astonishingly easy to take
photographs by making all the shooting processes automatic. People who know next to

nothing about photography can still produce high-quality photographs. The transition from

the film camera to the digital camera has changed our idea about what to take pictures of.

When photographers used film in the past, each photo cost money. Thus, people took

pictures mostly on special occasions, such as weddings, graduations, and trips to exotic

places. Now we can take pictures of anything we want, whenever we want. No one thinks

that taking a picture of tonight’s dinner, a lovely pet, or a book you like, is strange or a

waste of money. The Smartphone and Citizen Journalism By integrating the mobile phone

and the camera, the smartphone has further transformed the way we use and think about

photography. Nowadays, whenever we want to take a picture, our camera is already in our

hand, in our smartphone. The smartphone has also made it easier to share our photographs

with others since smartphones come with a wireless Internet connection and social

networking apps. These features of the smartphone have resulted in new picture-taking

habits. Taking a photograph of oneself was difficult and not often done in the past.However,

the smartphone made it so convenient and popular that taking a photograph of oneself, or

a selfie, is now one of the most common types of photography on the Internet. It can be

said that the smartphone lets everyone use photography as a tool for self-expression. The

smartphone also enables ordinary people to gather, report, and spread news without relying

on the mainstream media, such as newspapers or television. This practice is called citizen

journalism. Thanks to citizen journalists, inappropriate or inconsiderate behaviors, such as

leaving one’s pet’s droppings on the street or abusing a bus driver, are quickly

photographed and reported online. Internationally, citizen journalism has played a crucial role

in letting the world know the realities of major world events, such as the earthquake in

Haiti and the Arab Spring. By any measure, the world today is far different from the world

as it was in the film Argo. There are infinitely more photographs and amateur photographers

now than there were 40 years ago. Some people worry that these changes have made us

preoccupied with taking pictures and flooding the Internet with too many unimportant

images. There may be some truth in that, but it cannot be denied that technology today

has made photography an essential part of our culture and that it has altered the way

people see the world

Lesson 3 Extend Your View of Art Kim Whanki, Painter of Korean Beauty

Kim Whanki, one of the most beloved Korean artists, is considered the leading figure in the

first generation of Korean Abstract painters. He is more than just that, however. All his life,

he devoted himself to discovering the essence of Korean beauty. Moreover, he was a man

who never ceased to challenge himself and grow as an artist. Kim Whanki was born in 1913,

on a small island in South Jeolla Province. During the Japanese occupation, he spent most

of his adolescent years in Seoul and then studied painting in Japan. It was during this time

that he became familiar with new trends in Western art, including Abstract painting. After

Korea achieved its independence from Japan, he became both a promising painter and

respected professor at an art college in Seoul. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, he

went to Busan for safety. His paintings Shanty and Refugee Train portrayed the hard life of

the common people during wartime. However, these paintings are not depressing images.

Bright colors and simple lines show hope for life among people who did not give in to their

difficult circumstances. Returning to Seoul after the war, Kim Whanki felt a strong desire to

capture the essence of the beauty found in traditional Korean art. He collected old Korean

paintings and pottery. He especially loved large white porcelain moon jars. When he was

asked why moon jars attracted him so much, he said, “Korean jars have broadened my idea

of beauty. The jars are like curious textbooks for my paintings.” Along with jars, he often

included mountains, plum blossoms, and the moon as subjects in his paintings. Paintings like

Jars and Plum Blossoms and Jar and Moon represent his love of Korean pottery and other

traditional objects. At the time, his painting style was semi-abstract; viewers could see

certain forms in his paintings although the objects were simplified. By the early 1950s,

although Kim Whanki had become successful as an artist, he was not satisfied with being an

outstanding painter only within Korea. In 1956, he resigned from the college and went to

Paris, where he lived for three years. He concentrated on delivering the beauty of traditional

Korean objects on canvas to the people of France. During this period, objects were given

more simplified shapes, and his art became more abstract. In his famous work Song of

Eternity, he included natural objects from the sipjangsaeng, the 10 symbols of eternal life,

such as water, stones, mountains, clouds, and pine trees. It was praised by art critics for

combining Asian concepts and ideals with abstraction. Kim Whanki returned to Seoul in 1959
and quickly regained his fame as a prominent artist. In 1963 at the age of 50, he became

the first Korean artist to be invited to the São Paulo Art Biennale in Brazil. Meeting artists

from all over the world and seeing their works, he decided to go directly from São Paulo

to New York to challenge himself and extend his artistic boundaries. Life in New York was

not easy. In the beginning, he received negative reviews from critics. Once an art dealer lied

to him and sold his paintings without paying him. On another occasion, a group of paintings

were lost during an exhibition. With loneliness and financial difficulty, he tried to find a way

to survive in New York as an artist. During his 11 years in New York, Kim Whanki’s style

eventually reached complete abstraction. He gradually took away figures and filled his

canvases with basic elements such as dots and lines. His masterpiece, Where, in What Form,

Shall We Meet Again?, completed in 1970, is covered with thousands of blue dots. The title

was taken from a famous poem by Kim Kwangsup, which is about looking at the stars and

longing for loved ones. Kim Whanki explained, “The dots are the faces of all my friends in

Korea. The faces I was longing for became the stars in my mind and the dots in my

painting.” Starting with that work, he began to use only dots and created his own unique

style called “dot painting.” In dot paintings, he filled big canvases with countless dots. Most

of these paintings were in his characteristic blue tones, which represented the color of the

sea near his hometown.

In the Evening

Kim Kwangsup

Of all those numerous stars,

one in particular looks down upon me.

Of all these countless people,

my eyes are set upon one particular star.

As the night grows deeper,

it fades into brightness

and I disappear into darkness.

Where, in what form

shall the two of us...

you, one so warm, and me, one so tender,

meet again?

Kim Whanki passed away in New York in 1974.

Throughout his entire life, his artistic passion never

grew old or became weak. Almost half a century has

passed since his death, but his art is still highly

respected. Meanwhile, his life story helps us realize

how important it is to be true to and passionate

about our dreams and ideals.