[비즈한국] Monday morning. The alarm rings, and I open my eyes. Before I can even take a breath, a sigh comes first. I squeeze into the subway among expressionless people. No one looks at anyone else. Everyone stares only at their smartphones, escaping into their own worlds. And as the day comes to an end, we mindlessly mutter things like, "Today just passed by again."
We are exhausted. It’s not that anything is terribly wrong. We are just depressed for no reason, and our hearts feel hollow. It feels like there is something we want to do, yet we don’t actually know what it is. A day that is nothing special feels heavy for no reason. Psychologists call this state "chronic depression." Not a storm, but a gray-hued emotion created by the accumulation of quiet raindrops. That’s what it’s like, so to speak.
‘I Have a Romance Every Day’ is like a warm prescription for that gray life. What kind of romance do you harbor? That question is not as simple as it seems. We often associate the word "romance" with the distant future or something grand. That is wrong. A romance is simply something you want to do right now. Something your heart commands you to do, even if no one acknowledges it and there is no reward.
Listening to your favorite song on repeat during your commute. Pouring beer into your favorite glass in the evening. Walking around the neighborhood with no purpose on a weekend afternoon. If those moments are romances, perhaps we already possess many things. They are just things we have overlooked under the name of "daily routine." A meal in a favorite bowl, a Saturday morning sleeping in, a quiet space set aside in a corner of my room. The life I once dreamed of was already within reach.
The author, Kang Chan-wook, calls himself an advertiser, but also a literary person, a golf enthusiast, a beer lover, and a walker. In other words, qualifications don’t matter. He offers the warm advice that if you like something, that is enough. You may be a salaryman at the office, but a musician playing the guitar after work, or a cook preparing soybean paste stew with care on a Sunday morning. The more things we love, the more three-dimensional we become.
The author was once obsessed with socks, collected vintage watches, and gathered LPs. Now, he writes. The time spent being immersed in such things adds up to a person's life. There is a strange power in the author's sentences, where he says that if you are envious, you should just try it, and that it’s okay to be a happy copycat. It feels like permission. The core message that permeates this book is that you don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to be better than anyone else, and you can start with just the heart that likes something—and that those beginnings make life a little different.
Who is the true rich person? Not the one with the most money, but the one who loves many things. Someone who loves something, someone who has a hobby, someone who has something they can immerse themselves in. That person is truly rich. Such a person’s day is different. Even the same amount of time is filled differently and flows differently.
The book asks: What do I like? Have I been obsessed with anything recently? Am I currently immersed enough to be called a "person of something"? Faced with this simple question, I recall the times I lived while forgetting myself. The days when my life was so full of things I *had* to do that I couldn't even think about what I *wanted* to do.
The book says it is important to follow that heart. Do a small, trivial romance right now. Don't put it off for the future, but live this very moment. That is what a romance is, after all. The heart that does what it wants to do. These moments accumulate to create a life that is a little more "me."