Cutting 11 cm Off My Chair Legs

I bought two bar stools on a local marketplace to match the wooden island table that I absolutely loved. But once I brought them home, I realized they were much taller than I had expected. For the past seven months, I've been eating in an awkward half-perched position. Eventually, I thought it would be nice if both I and anyone I invited over could sit comfortably.

The two stools had only cost me about 10,000 won, so buying new ones would probably have been the easier option. But when I bought them, I had spent a long time searching specifically for black leather stools, and even now I still couldn't find another design I liked as much.

So I started looking for someone who could shorten the legs. By chance, I found someone through a local marketplace app who would come to my home and cut them. After sitting on the stools several times to find the most comfortable height, I decided to have exactly 11 centimeters cut off.

This morning, after nearly a hand's length had been sawed away, the stools suddenly looked smaller and almost adorable. I slipped anti-slip socks onto their legs, and for some reason, that simple act made me genuinely happy.

I've always been good at letting things go. Whenever something no longer suited me or wasn't useful, I rarely hesitated to throw it away and move on. That has made my life feel lighter and freer, but it has also meant I've rarely experienced the quiet attachment that comes from living alongside something for a long time—the feeling that an object somehow reminds you of yourself, or that seeing it brings you back to a particular season of your life.

This time, though, I didn't replace something simply because it was inconvenient. Instead, I sat on it, measured it, and adapted it to fit my life better. Strangely, the more effort I put into making it work, the more attached I became to it.

The cost of cutting the legs ended up being more expensive than the chairs themselves, but it didn't feel like a waste at all. Someday, when I invite someone over and we sit side by side on those stools, drinking cocktails and talking for hours, I'm sure it will feel like money well spent.

As always, my thoughts eventually found their way back to people.

Maybe relationships work the same way.

Choosing someone because they seem wonderful, or because they feel like a good match, is often the easy part. The real attachment is built afterward—through learning to understand one another, adjusting to each other's differences, and choosing, again and again, to make the relationship work.

Perhaps attachment isn't something we discover at the beginning. Perhaps it's something we create through the time, care, and effort we're willing to invest. Just as the true value of these stools no longer lies in what I paid for them, but in the care I put into making them fit my life, the true value of a relationship may lie in everything two people are willing to build together.