“The words of encouragement I most want to believe in are in this book.” _ Professor Na Min-ae

A message from an eighty-year-old poet to those crossing the cold and hot age of forty.
Adult comfort and encouragement to believe in

National poet Na Tae-ju published a collection of essays titled “To Forty.”
In 2025, when I will be 80 years old, I will write a collection of stories that I would like to leave behind for those who have lived half of their lives.


Longer life, longer life.
In a world where the concept of age is changing, forty is still an age that feels young.
But for someone who is actually over forty, it will feel different.
If we were to compare it to a season, wouldn't it feel like enduring the scorching midsummer like a deepening green?
What is clear is that this is a time when you feel like you are at a turning point in your life.
To those in their forties, the poet says, “Let’s live a little longer.”
Even when difficult moments come, don't panic or stop, just move forward little by little, giving them the encouragement they need now.


“I have written in this book what I have seen, heard, and felt over the many days I have lived, and I hope to give it to you, the young people, who are at a turning point in your lives.” (From the Preface)

The story the poet wants to convey is not a grand story about life lessons or life philosophy.
These are just small, trivial stories that come to mind as you go through life in your forties.
From the poet's voice, which speaks of gratitude and happiness in the blowing wind, the passing white clouds, and even a single blooming flower, we learn the power to willingly love our present life.
The comfort and encouragement from a true adult who is twice as old as forty, who can barely be called an adult, will be the strength that forty-year-olds need most as they navigate the hot summer of life.

A truly successful person is someone who, while doing what they love and are good at, gradually realizes the person they dreamed of as a child as they grow older.

--- p.25

The same is true when we think we have taken a wrong turn or failed in life.
Let's start again, believing that this will be a good opportunity to open a new path for tomorrow.
The path you are taking now may become a new path for you.
--- p.75

Just as I was helped by reading other people's poetry when I was young and in difficult times, my poem, please fly as far as you can and help someone I don't know yet.
Be a comfort, a joy, and a blessing to them.
--- p.128

sorry.
thank you.
I'm so grateful that you've endured and lived with someone like me for so long.
It's late to say this, but I think meeting you was the greatest luck I've ever had in this world, and meeting you was the greatest bad luck I've ever had.
--- p.143

Let's take a closer look at me.
Let's try to understand me a little better.
So let's create another path for me to go with you.
How am I doing today? Sometimes, it's worth greeting myself and asking how I'm doing.

--- p.153

If so, happiness is also learning.
We are willing to practice happiness and prepare ourselves.
We are people who live well enough now.
People who don't know how to live well end up living poorly.
We are happy enough people today.
People who do not know what happiness is become unhappy.

--- p.172

The flowers that I liked and wrote poems about and drew were flowers that bloomed on weeds rather than flowers that bloomed on plants.
If I think about it, it's a bit of a contradiction that I'm pulling out weeds indiscriminately like this.
Wasn't I also a weed that could have been uprooted by someone's wicked hands at some point, under some circumstances?
--- p.201

That is the developmental task that people truly must accomplish as they grow older.
In my case, the first person I needed to forgive and reconcile with was my father.
And next is the son.
This developmental task of mine is still in progress.
I don't know how far I'll go, but I want to live long enough to do that.
--- p.221

I am grateful for all the love that has passed and I also pay tribute to all the love that will come again.
Love, live forever.
My beloved heart, even though you are tired and staggering, you are beautiful.
Someone's life, with love, will become infinitely smaller and shabby, but it will also become infinitely more profound, deeper, and more fragrant.
--- p.245

There is a humility and softness in the second best that the best cannot keep up with.
There is also a soft leisure.
Perhaps the path to true happiness lies in knowing how to be content with less-than-ideal choices or outcomes.
--- p.247

But if you ever have a really hard day in life or a day when you feel like you can't breathe, I want you to look up at the sky.
There, through the wind, through the white clouds, through the moon and stars, your father will be looking down on you.
I hope you will think of your father with your heart at that time.
Even in the sound of a bird you hear on the road or in a single flower blooming on the roadside, your father's heart will live on.

--- pp.255-256