Despite the fact that people spend a lot of time online nowadays, the ability to build relationships and understand each other remains a vital need for everyone.
“There is already study of emotional intelligence!” you might say. Yes, we agree. Moreover, the concept of social intelligence has been developing for decades, and psychology has long been talking about empathy. But history proves that scientific exchange between countries contributes to the development of the whole world. So, although it seems that shimjeong is a new concept, it is actually several centuries old, and today, as the East gradually opens up its knowledge, the Western world has the opportunity to get acquainted with its cultural and scientific heritage. Korea introduces us to shimjeong.
The Korean word 심정 心情 [shimjeong] consists of two characters:
心 [shim] – meaning heart, soul, and 情 [jeong] – meaning feelings, emotions.
To be able to love each other, it is important to know about the Heart. It is very difficult to translate the word “shimjeong” from Korean. It has a deeper meaning than what is conveyed by the word “heart”. It means “to be loving, caring, sympathetic”.
Shimjeong can be explained as an unstoppable emotional impulse to receive joy through love.
Shimjeong is a whole, but we can distinguish certain components. Throughout our lives, we grow through love, developing four types of shimjeong in us: children’s shimjeong, sibling’s shimjeong, marital shimjeong, and parental shimjeong.
For better understanding, shimjeong can be compared to a fruit. A tree can have many flowers and many fruits. But if in the autumn all the fruits fall off before they are ripe, and only bare branches remain on the tree, you will see a miserable and sad picture! But even if there is a small number of ripe fruits, if one of them has become mature and surpassed all the others in quality, such a tree can be proud of this one fruit, which has become better than tens of thousands of other fruits.
The fruit is a reflection of the tree, which historically inherits all the elements that have accumulated in this tree over the ten or twenty years of its life, which it has passed on to the fruit along with its life force. Shimjeong is the fruit of a person’s life.
In order to develop perfect shimjeong, a person, like a tree, goes through certain stages of his life. These are birth, marriage, and death, which are the most important events in the life of every individual. In order to become fruitful in his development, a person must create a close bond with his parents, then with his spouse, and from that moment on, walk together on a common path until the very death. This is how a person’s shimjeong develops.
