Jeong

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

THERE is a word in Korean that surpasses love. I encountered this word while watching a movie whose title I have forgotten, but whose dialogues and words I can remember very well. I remember one particular word because it is something I tried to find for a long time, something that describes what I felt, something that is beyond the existing descriptions of love.

Jeong is not just a word, “it is a very broad concept in Korea and is a really important part of Korean people and culture”. Even Koreans have difficulty defining the word which can be considered closest to love, but it also includes “affection, compassion, sympathy, community, attachment and others. It is a concept that describes a relationship between humans and may also be felt towards objects. “Jeong can even be felt toward someone you fight with constantly as there’s a sort of connection” called miunjeong.

It is a type of connection, attachment, a shared experience. I can think of pagmamahal (love) combined with pagkatao (being human), pakikipagkapwa (community), pagintindi (understanding), pakikibahagi (sharing), and some other words that describes the complexity of relationships. I have not encountered one word that encapsulates all these.

For a long time, I tried to define what drives attachment other than love or hate. I know people who had broken off, but maintain a deep connection towards each other, sans the normal proclivities of lovers and enemies. It could be love, or something else. Certainly, I myself went through this process, a constant redefinition of my relationships, which I realize, never really stops evolving and never stops encompassing. Now I say that that what applies to me is the word jeong.

This evolution of relationships prompts me to refrain from calling anyone my best friend, my boyfriend, or lover, or anything else, because in reality, change happens and they may no longer be what they are to me at some point. I call them by their names, with all the attendant implications and uniqueness of their being. I do the same with my friends who are usually called with an honorific, thinking that labels and honorifics limit the qualities inherent to them. I remember someone calling her husband Director, even among people who are accustomed to calling him by his pet name, at private dinners among close friends. The husband squirmed at first but eventually accepted being called Director, and like his wife, got stuck with it.

Definitions have a way of boxing in. When asked to introduce ourselves, we normally state our name, occupation, and our personal statistics. It provides a glimpse to what we are, but is not the best way to pave the way towards a more accurate understanding of who we really are and how we think, a prerequisite to genuine cooperation and relationships. We can approach who we are through the concept of jeong, more than the concept of existing words, and accepted norms.

 

More than

you are to me, more

than your name

existing in between spaces

of words, around it

above it, below it

growing beyond blanks

filling in.

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