Artist Kang Jin-i, who captures happiness and gratitude, presents a "picture diary for adults living in this era"! Artist Kang Jin-i, who captures moments of happiness and gratitude hidden like jewels in the ordinary, everyday life through loving drawings and words, presents her second book in eight years, "Can Happiness Be This Trivial?"


The author has kept a diary full of memories for decades, capturing them that brighten the heart just by recalling them.
He captured and recorded the small scenes of life that he had embroidered without missing a single one.
As we go through difficult days and get caught up in life, the word 'happiness' often feels vague and unattainable.
But Kang Jin-i clearly shows us through his work of recalling childhood memories and looking into the clean faces of those around him.
It makes us realize that happiness is actually the countless small moments that decorate our lives, waiting just within reach.


This book is an expanded version of "I'll Give You Happiness," a book that brought many people to tears of happiness after its publication.
By selecting some of the texts and illustrations included in the previous work and adding fifty-one new texts and illustrations, we completed a book with high collection value.

When you raise your head, the neighborhood scenery fills your eyes.
In the middle of the rooftop, my uncle spread out a mat and lay down.
The streetlights standing in the alley are dim, and the stars dotted across the black sky come into my eyes one by one as time passes.
The moment when I found my one jewel-like star among the countless stars pouring down and looked at it with all my heart.
That ethereal mystery created another universe within me.
…The night sky I saw lying on the rooftop that day, the stars, and our appearances were so beautifully embroidered into my life.
On a starry summer night.

--- p.17

Nature is in no hurry, whether in spring, summer, or even in autumn as it heads towards winter.
“Things that are ripening do not run breathlessly,” poet Park No-hae sang of autumn.
The yellow leaves and dense fruits will soon fall and scatter here and there, leaving only traces, but the tree that feels the wind without missing a single moment remains steadfast.
I want to live like that too.
Nature does not envy or compare itself to others.
I think I understand a little now that I'm just trying my best at every moment to mature into who I am.
--- p.49

There are always things that we only realize belatedly as time passes.
I miss my grandmother more now than when she was alive.
grandma.
I have many good things that my grandmother gave me while we were together.
I hope you are well.
Before we know it, spring is coming
--- p.59

I held the child who was blushing from making a snowman and tightened his loose scarf and clothes.
The children's sparkling eyes are filled with happiness.
Children bloom like flowers in the snow.
Children are beings that should not be greedy, and their very existence is a great gift.
Today, too, I look at this precious being as if I were looking at a flower bud growing in a snowy field.
--- p.69

As the winding alleys disappeared, the stories and memories within them disappeared as well, leaving us with only a deep longing.
In any case, our lives are bound to change over time.
But life is too short to live with regrets after losing something or after it has passed.
I missed those many alleys and drew the alleys on a clear day and the alleys on a rainy day.
The pictures capture the memories of many people, including myself… .
--- p.77

There are memories that brighten my heart.
The sunlight, the air, the children's cheerful voices that day.
After class, the children, who had come out like the ebb tide, spent the afternoon scattered to the playground, the neighborhood vacant lot, in front of the amusement arcade at the stationery store, and at their friends' houses.
When the spring air began to ripen, there were people waiting to welcome us at the school gate.
There was a man carrying a box full of chicks on his bicycle, and there was an old man selling lottery tickets who stopped us in our tracks with the mouth-watering smell of sweet potatoes.
I also remember the lady who spread out the table with hairpins, bells, and hair ties.
In particular, I always waited for my grandmother, who would spread out on a cloth a beautiful and colorful doll dress, shoes that fit my fingers perfectly, a bag, and a hairbrush.

--- p.96

One day, I went to a traditional market and happily bought a doll that looked similar to the one I used to play with as a child.
Next to the baby doll in the sky blue bathtub, there was also a milk bottle and a hairbrush, just like in the old days.
The doll had long since left our house, and I kept the bathtub in the bathroom and used it with a cleaning brush, but recently I saw that it was broken and threw it away without any regrets.
Each and every object leaves behind a memory.
I turned on the shower and washed the soap bubbles off the children's heads. Their dirty looks were nowhere to be seen, and they became soft, fluffy angels.
How wonderful it would be if we could live like this, washing away the dregs of life that have accumulated in our hearts.
It was this moment today that cleaned out the dregs inside me.
My daughters smiling with bright faces.
--- p.118

My husband, who is so happy that he doesn't know what to do, seems to have his eyebrows, eyes, mouth, heart, and even his sagging cheeks all raised to the very top of his face.
The snow-covered morning commute, the arduous social life of enduring the day while keeping an eye on others, and the loneliness that comes from feeling lost at times - the strength to endure it all is family.
I'll be thinking about it for a long time.
This moment today.
--- p.145

As I got married, had children, and became parents, and my children grew up, I gradually came to understand my mother and grandmother as women, parents, and people.
A relationship where thoughts and actions sometimes move separately and hurtful words are exchanged, but they understand each other as if nothing had happened.
I also learned from seeing the endless love my mother gave me, so I should become a mother like that too…
My mother looks to my grandmother, I look to my mother, my daughters look to me, and that's how we grow up looking at each other.

--- p.229