On Language and Life: How this Korean Word has Changed the Way I Think
In middle school, I tried to define a word by giving examples. I still remember the disappointed look my English teacher gave me as he said, “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t know what it is.”
Seven years later, I think of this interaction as I reflect on this past summer having received the Cansbridge fellowship and moved to Korea.
In Seoul, I worked as a marketing intern at an EdTech company called Eggbun. At work, I would ask my coworkers to define Korean words for me any chance I got. I’d constantly bring up words I heard throughout my day — in an elevator conversation I wasn’t part of, a kdrama I skipped through, or some advertisement plastered on my commute to work.
It was a month into my internship when I asked my coworkers what Jeong meant. I expected them to answer in the same way they answered all my questions before: I expected them to explain it to me simply. Instead, they gave me examples.
At the end of the conversation, I still didn’t understand.
“So, it’s like caring about somebody?” I asked.
Wonseock, our software developer, thought for a moment, then said, “kind of, but not fully. Jeong is too complicated to define. It’s even hard for Koreans to understand.”
I pressed further, “But how would you explain it if you really had to? Is there an English word that means the same thing?”
Mimi, our graphic designer, shook her head, “Jeong is a Korean concept. No translation. But, maybe, if I had to explain it, it would be a love for humanity.”
She paused for a moment then cocked her head, “but even that wouldn’t be completely right. Jeong is something that you experience and then you say ‘Oh! This is Jeong!’”
After spending two months in Korea, I still don’t fully know what Jeong means. I still don’t know how I would begin to describe it. All I have are these little moments where I’ve thought with absolute certainty, “Oh! This is Jeong!”
***
Example 1:
It is a Tuesday in June and I am eating lunch with my coworkers. I ask them about Korean food and they tell me the best snacks. I write down the names in my notes app so I can try them later.
When I’m working at my desk that afternoon, Mimi and Wonseock bring me everything we talked about at lunch. Neither of them knew that the other also went out to buy me the snacks. They laugh as they see each other placing the same things on my desk. We are all laughing together.
Example 2:
It is afternoon in July and we are sitting around the office as our boss tells us a story. For the first time in months, I get a random wave of anxiety. I try my best to hide it and focus on the words I hear, but my coworkers tell me I seem tired.
Without looking in my direction, Mimi puts her hand on my shoulder. She does not take it off for the rest of the story.
It has been two months of living alone in Korea. All I think about is how I’ve never known what it’s like to have a sister. All I think about is how I’m certain it would feel like the weight of her hand on my shoulder.
Example 3:
It is 1 am in August and I am getting ready to go to the airport and leave Korea. My friend, Elif, walks into the apartment with a plastic bag in hand.
“I wanted you to have the full Korean experience before you leave. I thought ice cream would do the trick.”
I open the bag expecting to find one, maybe two Korean ice creams. I find twelve.
When I look up at her, she shrugs, “I couldn’t figure out which one you’d like best so I bought them all.”
***
As I write this article at the end of my Cansbridge summer, I realize that I’ve learned two things, and they both come from my understanding of Jeong.
First, I’ve realized that Jeong, as hard as it is to define, is not so hard to find. I see it all the time now. I see it as I watch myself and my other fellows schedule calls with potential Cansbridge applicants because we know how scary it is to apply. Or, last week, when my taxi driver waited two hours in the hills of Indonesia for me to finish exploring an elephant sanctuary because he knew I’d have trouble finding transport back into the city.
And so, it all boils down to this: three years ago I was worried about picking a university a two-hour drive away from home because I thought I would miss my family and support system too much. This summer I moved across the world to Korea alone.
In realizing that Jeong — this affection, this care, this love for humanity — is all around me, the world doesn’t seem as scary as it used to. It is this realization that has prompted me to not return to the familiarity of campus this fall. Instead, I am taking remote classes and continuing to travel (mostly alone) for the next four months. And I would be lying if I said this decision doesn’t scare me or make me anxious. But my summer in Korea — a country where I came without speaking the language and without a support system — has shown me that I can go to any corner of this world and still find my place in it with people who care about me.
The second lesson I’ve learned this summer comes from trying to define Jeong.
As someone minoring in English, I’ve always found comfort in language: how we have collectively agreed upon definitions for the world around us. So you can imagine how uncomfortable learning about Jeong was for me. And the most frustrating part wasn’t even that every person I asked seemed to be confused about its definition. The thing that got me was that every person I asked seemed to be okay with not knowing.
Because, the thing is, I’ve spent my entire undergrad thinking I had to have myself and the things I do defined and figured out. I started undergrad so sure I was going into research. But then I actually spent a summer doing it and I had the sinking feeling I couldn’t do it for the rest of my life.
It was incredibly scary as I came to terms with the fact that the excel spreadsheets I made in first year with my 4 month, 4 year and 10 year plans were probably obsolete. I had defined myself as an aspiring researcher and this label gave me a feeling of control over my actions and sense of self. If I knew my dream career, I could work backward from my ten-year plan and feel confident I was taking the right steps toward my ideal life — I knew what internships to pursue, what clubs to join, and what classes to take.
When I applied to Cansbridge, I knew I wasn’t sure about research, but that I had a good feeling about entrepreneurship from having joined pitch competitions that year. But having a good feeling about something as big as your career wasn’t good enough for me. I started this summer wanting to get an answer, thinking that doing my internship would solidify my feelings about marketing.
But it’s September now and this is what I know: I loved my coworkers, my company, my overall internship experience, and there are parts of me that can see myself being fulfilled doing a similar role in the future. But I end this summer still unsure if I can see myself doing it for the rest of my life.
And if I’m being honest, I think I used to regard any vagueness as a lack of introspection. I thought if I just meditated enough, if I journaled enough, if I talked it through enough, I could figure out exactly what I felt about any situation. But I think knowing — about anything really — doesn’t come from some hidden box of truth within you, waiting to be unlocked. It isn’t a final destination. It isn’t an answer — a definition — where you can cling to the knowledge that it’s always going to stay the same.
It’s like how Jeong has no set definition and knowing its meaning comes from small moments of clarity where you think, “Oh! This is Jeong!”. Because contrary to my middle school teacher’s opinion, things can’t always be explained simply; sometimes, all you have are examples to make sense of the world around you. And so I’ve realized that knowing about anything — yourself, your future career, the people in your life — doesn’t come from an unwavering conclusion. It comes from taking scary leaps of faith in the world until you have one moment where you think ‘Oh! This feels right!’ and then you have another and another and you don’t ever get to stop looking for these moments.
Because knowing is a constant state of thesis-checking. And it’s a lot scarier this way: to think you can wake up one day and realize you don’t like your job, or your partner, or your city anymore. To think that you can wake up one day and realize you want to give up all the foundations you’ve already set.
And while I used to dread this uncertainty, I’m realizing it’s not all gloomy. In line with my friend’s favourite phrase, we owe it to ourselves to ‘seek discomfort.’ We owe it to ourselves to be honest with how we feel right now rather than how we expected ourselves to feel when we thought about it before. Because — and this is something I’ve come to terms with in the past week — the chance at something that is new and scary but really, really good is worth more than the comfort of settling for what is familiar.
And so this is all to say that I’m letting go of my need for control — my need to define — and taking every small moment of clarity as a step in the right direction. I don’t know what life is going to look like four months, four years, or ten years down the line. All I can know is whether something feels right in the moment. And in this moment, I have a semester of online classes, a one-way ticket to Nepal, a phone call to make, and a wonderful, wonderful feeling that everything is unfolding in the best possible way.
