Peace of Mind

“I didn’t get this old for nothing.”

Writer Park Wan-suh (76, picture), says she feels uncomfortable getting old nowadays, especially when there is so much anxiety about Korea’s aging society. Park, who recently published a new collection of essays, “Homi (a Korean gardening tool with a short handle and a short, triangle blade),” said, “It’s embarrassing, publishing a book of essays I wrote mostly after I turned 70,” but added firmly that she didn’t get old lazily.

Park has lived on the Achasan mountainside of Guri-si, Gyeonggi-do for nine years now. She says, “I have experienced happiness and peace that I wouldn’t give up for anything in the world,” while gardening magnolias, Japanese apricot flowers, apricot blossoms, cherry blossoms, and lilacs in her front yard flowerbed. Park emphasized, “Living as long as I have, I’ve experienced overwhelming, intense happiness, but that happiness was accompanied by an anxiety and uncertainty. In the happiness achieved through accepting and affirming the order of nature, there is no anxiety.”

The title, “Homi”, is a tool Ms. Park often uses when tilling her flowerbed. She compared hoeing to life, saying, “Weeding with a homi lets you feel the soil as if you were touching it with your bare hands. Looking back, I’ve felt like throwing the homi away, but never stopped weeding and digging.”

Park also scolded the political world. In an essay titled, “Ramblings of a Senile,” she said, “Perhaps they can’t tell themselves from others since they are all covered in so much mud. Their wrangling makes me sick enough to scream, ‘I’d rather die than look at them any longer.’”

Ms. Park lamented, “We were happy when we believed that a change would do the trick. Since the reform forces came into power, we no longer believe in reforms. The politicians’ increasing slander of each other and change of allegiances means it’s election season now, but I can’t think of anyone I want to replace them with. What are we to do?”

While admitting that “70 years is an awfully long time,” Park expressed her wish to give comfort and warmth to readers through her writing, saying, “When there was a number six in front of my age, I dreamt of using piercing and witty language, but now, I hope to write benevolent, comforting, warm things.”

kimjy@donga.com