The relief embarrassed me almost immediately. It wasn’t that I was grateful for one more day of the weekend. I simply didn’t want another day to begin.

There are moments, apparently, when the things that have reliably given shape to a life begin to lose their hold. A smell that once made you hungry before the food was even in front of you becomes, inexplicably, something you cannot bear. People whose company once came easily—people you laughed loudly with, without thinking—begin to grate on you, and you find yourself keeping a polite distance. Objects that gave you the private pleasure of possession, accomplishments that allowed you to think well of yourself: one day, they seem to have been emptied of whatever meaning you had stored in them.

It arrives without invitation.

An intruder, perhaps. Or a rescuer.

I don’t know whether this is merely what happens when the body and mind change, or whether it deserves the familiar, faintly ridiculous name of a midlife crisis. There is a sadness to it, though, and I cannot locate its source. It does not descend so much as seep in.

I understand, in the reasonable part of my mind, what I am supposed to make of this. These are signs. Something has run its course. Change is no longer an abstraction but a necessity.

Still, another conviction sits just as firmly inside me: people do not change easily. Perhaps they do not change very much at all.

So I have begun to think that what is needed before change is not resolve, but mourning.

The choices I made, and the consequences that followed them, have accumulated into something like the portrait of an era—an era I happened to live through and, without quite realizing it, helped bring to an end. It seems wrong simply to turn away from it. Some small ceremony is called for. A moment of respect for what was chosen, what was lost, what was gained, and what can no longer be recovered.

Then perhaps I can say goodbye to the old days without bitterness.

Not happily, exactly. But with the faint suggestion of a smile.

And from there, look carefully toward the new.

---

오늘 아침 눈 뜨자마자 월요일이 아니라는 사실에 크게 안도했다. 곧 씁쓸해졌다. 여전히 주말이라 다행이기 보다는 그저 새로운 하루를 시작하는 게 싫었던 것 같다. 
어느날 갑자기, 상상만으로도 입맛이 돌아서는 음식의 냄새가 유독 견딜 수 없이 꺼려지고, 껄껄대며 가깝게 지내오던 사람들이 고깝게 보여 데면데면해지거나, 깊은 만족감을 주는 물건과 스스로를 뿌듯하게 여기게 만드는 성취들이 아무 것도 아니게 되는 순간이 찾아온다.
마치 불청객처럼. 또는 구원자인 듯이. 
순전히 나의 몸과 마음이 달라진 탓인지 이게 소위 일컫는 ‘중년의 위기’인지 모르겠다. 원인 불명의 울적함이 스며든다.
이제는 정말 변화를 맞이할 때라는 것을 알리는 명백한 징후로 읽어야 한다는 것을 머리로는 안다. 이와 동시에 사람은 쉽사리 변하지 않는다는 뿌리 깊은 믿음은 떨쳐내기 힘들다.
내가 지나친 한 시대의 초상을 그려온 선택과 그 결과에 대해 삼가 애도의 의식이 필요하다고 느낀다. 그러면 미미하게나마 웃음 띤 얼굴로 옛날과 작별하고 새 날을 조심스레 바라볼 수 있을 것 같다.