Author Han Su-hee's first original prose collection in seven years
Days when anxiety becomes a daily routine,
About how to live without losing myself

A new collection of essays by author Han Su-hee, who has received support from essay readers with works such as “Totally Like Me,” “Today, We Walk in a Spiral,” and “I Should Write a Slightly Long Postscript.”
The author faces emotional issues as he experiences a sudden onset of tongue pain and anxiety disorder in his 40s of unknown cause.
An uncertain future, misfortune that could strike at any time, memories of poverty that are as unforgettable as first love, a business that could fail at any moment, a family that doesn't agree with us and endless worries about our children, old age that feels like news of a volcanic eruption in a faraway land but is sure to come, and even the lives of others that sparkle on social media make us anxious.
Author Han Su-hee delicately captures specific scenes of reality and the emotions and thoughts within them, sometimes humorously, sometimes poignantly.
"Matters of the Heart" is a record and notebook of mistakes made by one person who set out to find ways to view and coexist with the emotion of "anxiety" that we all harbor.

I couldn't see the countless things that were between happiness and unhappiness, or rather, the things that were neither happiness nor unhappiness at all.
So, I believed that it had to be this way, and every time it happened that way, it was painful, like the world was falling apart.
I felt that if I didn't correct that notion, if I didn't realize it deeply in my body and mind, I would live forever as a slave to anxiety and fear.
So I wanted to think deeply about that, about dichotomies, about success and failure, about good and bad, about right and wrong.
I wanted to find out.
I felt like writing about those things.
--- From "Prologue"

Learning to live with anxiety was something I thought I knew all too well, to the point of being tedious.
It was like rediscovering myself.
It was like learning to recognize others around me in a new way, to build new relationships with them, and to learn how to live in a new way in the world given to me.
To think that I'd only be able to do this after living for 40 more years, how long and unpredictable life is!
--- p.34

Now I can write about it as if I were talking about someone else, but back then, we too had to lose sleep every night due to worry and anxiety.
No matter how much I racked my brain, I couldn't find an answer to how I should live.
What if I can't pay my gas bill next month? What about my overdue national pension? What if I can't even afford my children's college tuition if I keep living like this? That feeling of despair still lurks deep inside me, occasionally resurfacing and shaking me.
Poverty, like first love, never ends.
--- p.59

Because it could be anything, no matter what you choose, you start to worry that it might be the wrong choice, that you might have made a hasty decision when there might have been a better option.
It's even more confusing to choose what to do because it could be anything.
I keep getting impatient because I can do anything.
Wouldn't it be better to do that at this time? Wouldn't it be better to do that at the time I'm doing that? (...) Actually, it's not that I'm lazy.
Life is so busy.
But why am I so busy? Why is there no end to the things I have to do?
--- p.103

Life is never ending.
It's a never-ending loop.
Even if you clean and wash it thoroughly today, it will be dirty again tomorrow.
No matter how carefully you prepare a dish, it is destined to end up in the toilet.
Life is that fleeting.
(…) You work so hard at that fleeting thing.
Every day, I act like Sisyphus, rolling a stone up the mountain.
It's like I'm going to die tonight and be reborn tomorrow morning.
I do this, believing that this fleeting thing will sustain me.
In this unpredictable world that rolls on regardless of my will, I build my own small, solid world.
--- p.106

A life where you can have dessert at McDonald's at night and a McMorning in the morning.
It doesn't have to be McDonald's.
It's not something I do often either.
But a life where that can happen at any time seems pretty good.
A healthy state where it's not dangerous to eat a sweet dessert at night, a financial state where you can easily eat something like a McDonald's dessert and a McMorning, and a relaxed state of mind where you can try small pleasures in things you don't necessarily have to do.
It may seem like it would be very difficult to have all of those things, but it would also seem very easy.

That day, we were on our way back from visiting my father-in-law, who was hospitalized after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
--- p.120

But nothing has happened yet.
Anything can happen and nothing can happen.
Imagining the future too specifically invites anxiety.
As time passes and I gradually get over my anxiety, I return to my recklessly optimistic self.
Okay, okay, you've been doing it somehow up until now.
So, I think we'll be able to somehow get through this in the future.
(…) So, relax your body.
Straighten your shoulders.
Take a deep breath and exhale for a long time.
And leave you to time, to what happens.
Let go of the desire to control time.
You are not that great.
Surrender yourself to it as if you were letting the waves take you.
--- p.127

I walk to the playground with such thoughts in my mind.
My heart feels a little lighter.
Start running slowly.
Look at the sky.
With each lap, the clouds take on different shapes, and the soft green leaves sway serenely in the breeze.
The sun is setting far in the west.
Yes, I exist in a dense network of all these things.
Without these, I am nothing.
Thinking about it that way actually made me feel better.
That I don't have to take full responsibility, that I can lean on others more actively since I'm already leaning on them, that I can be even more irresponsible than I am now, and that I won't die anyway.
--- p.148

I want to live a good life.
I want to live a good life, not a great, wonderful, or successful life.
What does good mean? I don't know for sure right now, but as I go through life, I gather definitions and examples of good, and won't my life naturally become my own good life?

--- p.208