The Story My Heart Leans On.
📖 Joyful Words in a Sad World_Jeong Hyeyun
A book with a beautiful cover that catches the eye
with Yoshigo’s emerald sea photograph.
After reading recommendations for it here and there,
I impulsively bought it on a day when I desperately needed warm comfort.
I feel once again the great power that stories hold.
Because stories this beautiful and powerful exist,
this world is still a place worth living in.
After closing the book, I think about
what words have carried me this far.
📝 Thoughts and sentences I loved
Nearly everyone can find, deep in their hearts, a few words that are like indelible marks. Without secret memories that dwell in our hearts, we would be nothing.
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The fact that we want to know each other’s words is in itself something moving. The world works hard to erase our names and uniqueness — part-timer, job seeker, delivery guy, supermarket lady, the person who can’t have kids, the third girlfriend, that strange PD, someone I used to see — and all the numbers: unemployment figures, single-person household count, depression rates, industrial accident deaths, traffic fatalities. Yet none of these words or numbers speak to a person’s uniqueness or help us imagine another person.
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I humbly accept that even though I may know something is good, it takes a long time before I can express why. But being able to continue loving something, loving it more as time goes on — that is a great joy and a source of stability that can be obtained in no other way.
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Just as heaven was a word we needed because hell exists, just as joy was a word we needed because sadness exists, just as we needed beauty that would be remembered forever because life is short — we need the word freedom. There is only one way to escape this unfreedom. Regardless of what the world says, to protect something indestructibly precious within us.
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I wanted to hang myself out to dry in the sea breeze. I thought I wanted to sit there for just a few more days. Then this thought came to me: Why not? Why can’t I live while listening to sounds like this?
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One of those incomprehensible things just happened to me. It just happened. Being the father of two disabled children is simply one of the ways I live. Honestly, the worst part isn’t being the father of a disabled child. The worst part is that I have so many opportunities to be weak. This child could always be a convenient excuse for saying my life is hard.
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Sadness was not like that. Sadness is not a disappearing word. Sadness comes without notice, at its own whim, whenever it pleases. It comes even when you close your eyes. There are no eyelids that can block sadness from coming. Sadness makes you push through rough nights, exhausted. Sadness is a guest that demands to be taken seriously.
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The handwriting was in cursive. The three letters H, M, A were not separate but smoothly connected. As if the letters were reaching out their hands to one another.
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Whenever I think about how someone who grieved so deeply wishes for others’ happiness, I am amazed. A word where sadness and pain have been miraculously transformed — Hakuna Matata.
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When I spoke to him, he was shy. But he began to speak, gently and carefully. His way of speaking was cautious, like someone stepping on fresh white snow for the first time on a snowy day.
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Yes. At first, I just wrote whatever came to mind. Honestly, I thought, what value could a day in the life of someone like me possibly have? But knowing that I’d write something when I got home, my mindset gradually shifted. I’d want to remember things a bit more, even if it was just a cloud I glimpsed while working. I used to think my life had nothing worth recording, that every day was the same, that tomorrow would be the same, that there was no value in writing, no value in living… but eventually, I stopped thinking that way.
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Even within sadness, even within melancholy, we can live moments that are not one hundred percent sadness or melancholy alone. It is an exaggeration to say that nothing at all brings us joy. If only we can feel. Because our joys and sorrows are being made together with everything else.
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Our era thirsts for rewards. There are many disputes over rewards. Perhaps few people have flowers as their reward. Because her reward was flowers, the probability that the word happiness followed Mom is by no means low.
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“Daddy, what’s going on? Why are you pulling out the trees?”
I will never forget the answer that came from my father’s mouth that day.
“Children’s Day is coming soon.”
“What does that have to do with trees?”
“I’m going to plant them in the elementary school playground.”
“Why?”
“So the kids can cool off under the shade while playing soccer, and hide behind the trees to cry when their teacher scolds them, and lean against them when they fight with friends. No matter how upset you are, if you have something to lean on, the tears will stop.”
Hearing those words, I briefly felt I saw, in my father’s face, the boy who once leaned against a tree holding back tears. And from then on, this story became the story my heart leans on whenever it needs to.
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Dad believed in gifts that time gives. Letting go of things that aren’t truly necessary. People who have earnestly accepted the finiteness of life begin to care for one another and for those who remain.
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And I hope that we humans, who cannot live a single day without imagination, can imagine the flight of birds. Our human hearts weigh 300 grams. A bird weighs 113 grams. We have much to learn from that small bird’s courage. If only we could learn the courage of a bird flying through turbulence, storms, and lightning, our courage too would be different.
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The Sewol Ferry left me with at least three questions.
First, if we meet again, what stories should we tell?
Second, if death is that sorrowful, what is life? If life is already being stolen by death, what thoughts should we hold to preserve life’s preciousness?
Third, what does it mean that we love in this dangerous world?
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The world emphasizes our differences painfully, and we can never truly understand each other, and in between, time flows chillingly, pale and cold — but if we can become “we,” so much changes. Others can be a grueling hell, but what always breaks through loneliness is also the presence of others.
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Now the final question of our story remains. Who is telling the story of your life? Is it history? Is it the system? Is it the circumstances? Is it the real estate market? Is it what I possess? Is someone other than me speaking for me? If you’ve lost your voice, what did you gain in return?
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There is a saying that everything that reveals a person’s destiny is ‘poetry.’ If that’s the case, then these words that repeatedly appear in my life — they are my poetry.
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Love is a word of beginnings and endings, a word of action, and a word that wonders what will happen between two people.
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