Today I complete my seventy-seventh year upon this generous earth,

and I receive the day as one receives morning light—

without deserving it, yet full of gratitude.

Yet while I rejoiced, another birthday was unfolding beyond my sight.

Somewhere near Vladivostok
an old Korean family gathered wild dandelions,

not to celebrate life but to preserve it;

after seventy years of exile in Uzbekistan they had returned,

only to discover that home itself had become a stranger.

Others remained in Central Asia,
while descendants of those sent
long ago to the sugarcane fields
of Mexico and Cuba
still carried Korea
as an invisible homeland
flowering within the heart.

I salute them all!

For every diaspora knows what the dandelion knows.

Its root descends into darkness
without complaint;
its countless seeds surrender themselves to the free winds of heaven;
its leaves heal without boasting;
it asks neither fame nor applause,
only another spring in which to bloom wherever it has fallen.

So let me also be a dandelion.

Not seeking greatness,
but faithfulness;
but rootedness;
but the quiet grace of giving life
wherever the Creator has scattered me.

Water finds the lowest place
and becomes the sea.
Nature is complete simply
by being itself.
So perhaps the life
rather be also the simplest—
much perfect at every moment,

the meal shared with one’s beloved,
the child’s song across the ocean,
the brother’s laughter,
the blessing of friends,
the ordinary day received with little hand wave and moments of smiling.

This is my birthday.

This is everyone’s birthday.

The birthday of every exile
and every pilgrim,
every forgotten soul
and every hopeful child,
every wandering seed
carried across history by unseen winds.

O Creator,
thank You for these seventy-seven years.

Let me live and die as one small dandelion:
deeply rooted,
freely scattered,
quietly healing,

always turning my face toward Your everlasting Light.

— TaeHun Yoon, (Revised on 7/8/2026)