Even as humans live their lives, they never fully grasp the meaning of that life. They believe they know what they want, yet waver at the moment of choice, and even after achieving their goals, they ask again what that accomplishment means for their existence. Can this uncertainty be explained merely as personal indecisiveness or emotional deficiency? Rather, should we not look for the starting point of the problem in the fact that humans are both the agents of their own lives and beings who must interpret those lives?

The loneliness and wandering evoked through Cho Yong-pil's music provide an occasion to examine these questions. However, we must be cautious about directly expanding the emotions contained in songs into universal truths of human existence. The fact that art expresses particular emotions and the claim that those emotions explain human nature are propositions on different levels: the former is an interpretation of a work, while the latter demands philosophical argumentation.

■ Distinguishing Loneliness and Wandering

To discuss loneliness and wandering, we must first distinguish the two concepts. Loneliness is a problem arising in the relationship between oneself and others, whereas wandering is a problem arising between the possibilities one can choose and the actual direction of one's life. These two phenomena may appear together but do not necessarily stem from the same cause.

Humans confirm their position through social relationships. Recognition from others influences the formation of individual identity, and language, customs, and standards of value judgment are also acquired within social relationships. In this respect, it is difficult to regard humans as completely autonomous subjects separated from society. Nevertheless, social relationships cannot fully replace individual experience. Even people who experience the same event may understand it differently, because the meaning of experience is formed not only by the event itself but also by the memory, judgment, and circumstances of the person receiving it.

Here, one dimension of loneliness is revealed. Humans can share experiences with others, but they cannot make others live their experiences identically. Therefore, the existence of relationships and the complete sharing of experience must be distinguished. This distinction reveals the limits of explanations that reduce loneliness simply to a lack of human relationships. Social isolation can be a significant cause of loneliness, but not all loneliness arises from isolation. Conversely, time spent alone is not always experienced as loneliness.

■ Choice Within Conditions, the Meaning of Wandering

Humans are not observers separated from the world but beings who live within already-given environments. They do not choose the era or circumstances into which they are born; they understand possibilities and unfold their lives within given conditions. Humans carry the limitation of not being able to determine their own starting conditions.

This perspective leads us to revise the thinking that understands freedom as unlimited capacity for choice. Humans do not design their lives in a state of no constraints. They choose within historical environments, social relationships, economic conditions, and their own abilities and limitations. Therefore, it is inaccurate to always judge a situation of being unable to determine the direction of one's life as a lack of individual will. The difficulty of choice involves not only personal problems of judgment but also constraints on the possibilities actually available.

However, the fact that conditions limit choice does not render human judgment unnecessary. The problem of deciding what to prioritize among limited possibilities remains. Humans form the direction of their lives through their choices, but not everyone has the same conditions of choice. Philosophical discussion of freedom and the distribution of opportunities actually available for choice in reality must be distinguished.

Wandering can be understood in this relationship between conditions and judgment. That a person has not fixed the direction of their life does not necessarily mean they have no goals. They may simultaneously hold conflicting goals, or the values they consider important may not align with the choices available in reality. One may want a stable life while pursuing new possibilities, or desire recognition from others while refusing to be subordinated to that recognition. Such tension is not mere capriciousness of emotion but a collision between different values.

What, then, does it mean to resolve wandering? It is difficult to see it as eliminating all uncertainty. Humans cannot fully know the outcomes of their choices in advance, nor can they precisely calculate the long-term changes a choice will bring. Even when making rational judgments, uncertainty remains. Therefore, the problem of wandering does not end with discovering a certain answer. It extends to questions of on what grounds one judged and how one will accept the results of that judgment.

■ Achievement and Meaning Are Different

Here we need to examine the relationship between achievement and meaning. The fact that a goal has been reached shows that some action was successfully completed. But whether that goal was valuable in one's life requires separate judgment. Socially recognized achievement may give an individual satisfaction, but social evaluation and personal value judgment do not necessarily coincide. This is why the magnitude of achievement and the meaning of life cannot be measured on the same scale.

Without this distinction, explaining the emptiness after success easily over-psychologizes the problem. What matters is not remaining with the emotional question of why a successful person is dissatisfied, but examining what was regarded as success and through what process those standards were accepted. Humans pursue the goals they set, but even in the process of setting those goals they are influenced by society. They may accept others' expectations as their own desires, or conversely form their own standards in the process of resisting others' expectations. Here, autonomy is not so much a state completely free of social influence as the ability to critically examine the values and expectations given to oneself.

■ Identity, Memory, and Loss

The discussion of loneliness and wandering leads here to the problem of identity. When humans explain who they are, they do not present only their current state. They also tell where they grew up, what experiences they had, and what choices they have made. Identity relates not only to present attributes but to the continuity of life formed over time. Humans understand who they are by interpreting and connecting the events that have occurred in their lives. Here, identity is grasped not as a simple collection of unchanging properties but as a process of self-understanding formed within changing experience.

From this perspective, memory does not remain a function of storing past information. It plays a role in helping humans understand their lives as one continuous story. However, memory cannot be taken as the complete basis of identity, because memory is selective and can be reconstructed according to present perspectives. Explanations of the past relate to actual experience but cannot replicate the experience itself as it was.

How, then, should humans understand their past? What matters is not the belief that memory is perfect but the possibility of examining and revising memory. One can evaluate past choices from new perspectives and re-judge the meaning of values previously held important. Such change does not in itself mean loss of identity. Rather, how to connect changing experiences within one's life becomes an important problem of identity.

The experience of loss makes this connection difficult. When important relationships are severed or familiar conditions of life disappear, humans may experience a mismatch between the existing story with which they explained themselves and the changed reality. When the daily life that was once taken for granted no longer continues, the understanding of life's continuity may also be shaken. But loss does not bring the same result to everyone. Some people accept existing relationships and memories in new ways, while others may long remain unable to escape the experience of severance. Interpreting loss necessarily as an occasion for growth risks erasing these differences. The mere existence of pain does not confer positive meaning on that pain.

In discussing the relationship between memory and loss, the irreversibility of time must also be considered. Humans can reinterpret past events but cannot erase the fact that those events occurred. Understanding past time from a present perspective differs from returning to the past to live that time again. Therefore, longing cannot be explained simply as desire for a particular place or object. Memories of the time spent relating to that object, of oneself at that time, and of the way of life possible in that period may all work together. Even if one revisits a place from the past, the same experience is not reproduced — not only because of the place, but because the subject experiencing it has also changed within time.

■ Finitude and the Weight of Choice

This problem of time connects to human finitude. Finitude does not merely mean the fact that humans die someday. It also relates to the condition that humans cannot realize all possibilities simultaneously and must unfold their lives within irreversible time. One choice entails the result of not realizing other possibilities. While continuing one relationship, one may not be able to devote sufficient time to other relationships; pursuing a particular goal, one may have to give up other goals.

These constraints make human choice difficult, but they also explain why choice is important. If all possibilities could be realized at any time, the weight of a particular choice would differ from what it is now. Yet finitude does not automatically create the meaning of life. The fact that time is limited must be distinguished from the judgment of how that time should be used. The meaning of life is not derived from the condition of finitude alone; a value judgment about what to consider important is necessary.

■ Music and Philosophy, Different Approaches

At this point, art approaches the problem differently from philosophy. Philosophy distinguishes concepts and argues the relationships between claims. Music, by contrast, expresses human experience through language, melody, rhythm, and voice. Even without the form of argumentation, musical expression can influence how listeners understand particular emotions and situations. However, the mere fact that music evokes certain emotions does not prove particular philosophical propositions. The emotional persuasiveness of a work and its theoretical validity must be distinguished.

The task of art criticism lies in analyzing the problems a work raises without confusing the two. A work holds various interpretive possibilities, but those possibilities do not mean that all interpretations are equally valid. Interpretation must be supported by the work's language, structure, and context. Therefore, the fact that a listener finds their own experience in a song must be distinguished from the claim that that experience accurately explains the work's meaning. Personal appreciation can be the starting point of interpretation, but criticism must explain which elements of the work that appreciation connects to.

This distinction is especially important when discussing popular music philosophically. Popular music is characterized as art delivered to a wide audience. But the mere fact that many people empathize does not allow us to conclude that a work expresses universal truth. The scope of empathy and the validity of interpretation are different problems. Conversely, there is also no grounds to lightly dismiss the complexity of experience contained within music simply because it is consumed popularly. What matters is not the status of a work but examining what experience it expresses and what interpretations that expression makes possible.

This is also why Cho Yong-pil's music can serve as an occasion for philosophical discussion. The emotions evoked through his songs can lead listeners to reflect on their own experiences. However, drawing conclusions about human existence from those emotions requires separate conceptual examination.

Vocal performance is also an important element in this process. Even with the same verbal expression, the meaning listeners receive may differ depending on breath, stress, timbre, and melodic development. The voice is not merely a means of delivering the content of lyrics but an element constituting the work's sentiment. Yet the emotion conveyed by the voice cannot be fixed into a single meaning, because even listening to the same song, reactions may differ depending on the listener's experience and circumstances. This difference does not support the claim that a work's meaning is entirely subjective. Rather, it shows that interpretation is formed in the process where the work's expression meets the listener's experience.

■ What Art Can and Cannot Do

Art does not directly substitute for human experience. Listening to a song does not mean the listener lives the same life as the characters within the work. However, one can imagine situations one has not experienced or understand emotions already experienced from a different perspective. This possibility is one of art's important functions, but it cannot be assumed to bring the same result to all listeners. Some works may console, while others may evoke uncomfortable memories. Even the same work is received differently as time passes. This is why art's value need not necessarily be explained by its consoling or healing effects. Art may leave uncomfortable questions, shake existing judgments, or reveal emotions that are not easily resolved.

What, then, is the meaning of art that deals with human loneliness and wandering? Its meaning does not lie in declaring loneliness to be the essence of humanity or claiming that wandering is an essential process of growth. Such claims may oversimplify the differences of experience. Rather, its meaning lies in prompting us to distinguish the conditions under which loneliness and wandering arise and to examine how those experiences affect human choice, relationships, and memory.

■ Judgment Continues Even Amid Uncertainty

Humans relate to others yet cannot fully share their experiences; they choose within given conditions yet cannot fully predict the outcomes. They remember the past but cannot return to it; they plan the future but cannot realize all possibilities. These conditions leave uncertainty for humans. However, the mere existence of uncertainty does not render life meaningless. Judgment about the meaning of life is possible not only after removing uncertainty but also within uncertain conditions.

Here, human life is understood not as a completed result but as a process of continuous judgment. It is a process of examining what values one holds important, considering how actual choices relate to those values, and revising judgment according to new experiences. This process also includes relationships with others. Becoming the agent of one's own life does not mean rejecting others' influence. Rather, it is closer to forming one's own judgment while examining the values and expectations formed within relationships with others. Therefore, autonomy and relationship, freedom and constraint, memory and change are not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts. Humans live within a reality where these conditions operate simultaneously.

Loneliness and wandering may be experiences that reveal this complexity. But there is no need to romanticize them as the essence of life or define them as processes all humans must necessarily pass through. What matters is not loneliness and wandering themselves but the question of under what conditions those experiences are being undergone and how they can be understood.

In the end, humans can neither fully control nor fully explain their own lives. But neither is there reason to abandon the effort to interpret their lives. Humans live the results of choices already made while preparing for new choices. They try to understand their past experiences, but their judgment of those experiences may change over time. Asking who one is continues within this change.

What a good song can do may not be to present a final answer to that question. Rather, it may lie in making us think again about familiar emotions and experiences and prompting us to examine the standards of life we took for granted. Reflecting on human existence through Cho Yong-pil's music does not mean discovering life's answers in particular songs. It means taking the experiences evoked by the music as a starting point to think distinctly about the problems of freedom and responsibility, relationship and loneliness, time and identity.

Seen in this way, the question of where humans come from and where they go is not simply asking about life's starting point and destination. It is a question asking how one understands the conditions given to oneself, by what standards one chooses, and how one connects past experiences to present life. Loneliness and wandering are not answers to that question but some of the various conditions under which the question arises. And understanding human existence begins with not reducing those conditions to a single emotion or lesson.

[This content is an article spotlighting stars nominated for the Netizens' Awards. The Netizens' Awards is an online fan voting platform that does not sell voting rights and provides equal voting opportunities to all users. Rankings are determined by fans' voluntary and continuous participation rather than capital, and the cumulative 79 million votes are a record of pure fandom built from the choices of each individual fan. This article was partially assisted by AI.]