IAMT #19: 정(Jeong)
basis for my own definition of love
My folks taught me about 정 when I was a little kid, throwing around the phrase about people they have some sort of affinity for.
The phrasing would stick with me the most when my parents would say (roughly), “it’s so weird, but I inexplicably feel 정 for X”.
It’s simple at it’s core and after some research, the best English translation of it online seems to be “attachment”.
For myself, I’ve started to describe it as an “inexplicable familial love”.
What made me think to write this post is because of how there’s been a feeling of disconnect lately with some of my relationships.
Sometimes relationships work really well on paper. I’ve long since held the belief that three tenets establish the core structure of my friendships: compatibility, convenience, and history.
Compatibility is pretty straight forward. Convenience is how easy it is to maintain the connection. For example, an LDR isn’t conducive to staying close. History is how many meaningful memories you’ve shared with someone - having an endless bank of memories to pull from or trauma bonding, anecdotally, enriches long-term bonds.
Where I have cognitive dissonance is when either:
All three requirements are fulfilled in some way, yet I don’t feel any 정 for the person
Not all three categories are hit, and I feel an overwhelming sense of 정 for the person
Summarized, this comes down to expectations. As you may tell from the above, I’m constantly weighing the viability of a relationship (which is debatably healthy). When there’s the rare instance when my expectations are broken, I feel that innate, underlying sense of love, whether it be pouring out of me or evaporating. This is the narrow gray space in which 정 operates.
Ultimately, it’s hard to pinpoint when to act on this gut feeling. The emotional high is usually ephemeral; before I know it, the reality of why or why I don’t have the relationship returns to me. Do I put in effort to spend more time with this person (who may live inconveniently far, or I’ve only met once on an off chance)? Do I put distance between a person whom I’ve shared a rich history and relied on previously? All based on a fleeting instinct?
This concept of 정, paradoxically, should give me a sense of clarity. To provide me a brief moment to re-evaluate a system I’ve built up using decades of heuristic data. Such that, one day, I’ll make a new decision and realize my experiences hadn’t accounted for a way forward for a relationship that is or isn’t possible to maintain. At least that’s how it would be ideally.
A lot of the time, 정 instead reveals instabilities in my emotions.
Where this has especially been an issue relates to the “loss aversion” part of my brain, where negatives hurt twice as much as positives feel good.
The metaphor for trust seems to apply similarly, where “정 is gained in drops but lost in buckets”. Those one-off negative experiences are more often the ones that permeate my mind regarding my immediate connections.
I would be quick to act on these feelings, but part of maturing has been remaining steady through a larger variance of plausible interactions. Accurately judging a moment’s negative 정 has been a work-in-progress for the better part of a decade. I used to frequently rubber band between feeling slighted and loved - all it would usually take is a basic in-person reminder of why I’m close to that person in the first place for it to shift back to love.
Knowing the pain points is half the battle. To cure myself of this overthinking affliction, there are a few things I try to consciously think about. Like sharpening my boundaries to easily categorize how an interaction made me feel. Or finding better ways to let go of smaller instances of negative 정. I’m already satisfied with how I act on positive 정 but perhaps something to improve is reducing expectations of reciprocation.
It’s been hard wrapping up this post. I’ve had these thoughts sitting around for well over a month. My closing thoughts while writing this got too existential but came down to the question: is this the fun part about being human and young? If I were able to judge every interaction, every expectation perfectly, would I be void of any personality or happiness? Reading a lot of this back, the desire to optimize my social skills feels inhuman, yet reasonable, given the amount of headspace it occupies. I’m a long way from getting that sharp though so I won’t lose sleep over it.
Thanks for reading.
"All three requirements are fulfilled in some way, yet I don’t feel any 정 for the person"
Ouch!
"Not all three categories are hit, and I feel an overwhelming sense of 정 for the person"
Oh yeah, that feels good!