Candids: Jisun, Bridges & Keys to New Worlds

**Welcome to my new series called "Candids"! This interview series is all about you. Everyone has a story to tell or something to teach, and my camera and I are happy to be the medium. If you have a story you'd like to tell, please reach out to me!**

There’s no way to pinpoint where it all started, but Jisun’s love for people and language can be traced back to her early high school days. Growing up in Hong Kong, a country filled with people, languages, and foods from around the globe, and attending an international elementary school, Jisun began her life as a student of the world.

Yearly, in high school, she went on school field trips to other countries. Those trips were part of an educational series of cultural excursions that took her to Japan, New Zealand, Spain, and Fiji.

Fiji was especially special to Jisun. She stayed in a local place and connected with local Fijians. It was her own Shangri La, where the abiding rule was “Fiji time is no time.” That meant that if there were an event at 2 PM, you would arrive around 4 or 5 PM.

“The people there were so nice,” Jisun remembered. “I told them, ‘I have a boyfriend,’ and they said, ‘Ooooh! Who? Who’s your boyfriend?’ And I said, ‘Harry Potter!’”

One local boy embodied the values by which Jisun lives: inclusivity and empathy. His age spanned somewhere between 20 to 26 years old. He wore a Hawaiian-style tropical shirt and dark shorts. His face was round, and he always had the native bua flower behind his ear.

“He had a bubbly personality,” Jisun described when I asked what was special about this friend. “I felt like every time I was around him, he would really listen to me, to every word I was saying. And then he would respond to everything I said and made sure that I was included. I really like people like that.”

It’s an important topic to Jisun: inclusivity. Many may associate this term with politics or policy, but it’s her personal mantra. To her, it means including “anyone and everyone” in her personal life and social circles. As a child, Jisun was bullied a lot, and as a good friend and a Hufflepuff, she never wants anyone to feel the way she did during those times. “So, I’m always thinking about people and how I can include them,” she says.

Jisun says that inclusivity comes down to empathy and human decisions. Humans are social creatures, but she warns against groupthink and the “us vs. them” or the “in-group vs. out-group” mentalities. It creates conflict and opens doors to bullying. It directly contrasts empathy. However, these values also resonate strongly with Jisun as a Christian.

Several months ago, I had lunch with Jisun, and she related to me the hardships she'd recently experienced. She'd found herself in conflict with her friends at church, where she was very active in leadership. Complexly, though, those relational conflicts stemmed from her own internal battle between her personal values and the rhetoric of her church, religious beliefs that her friends echoed. Ultimately, the church asked her to step down from her leadership position due to their differences in beliefs.

Wherein lies the difference of beliefs? You guessed it: inclusivity.

“I want Christians to know that we don’t have to be a certain way, in particular if we’re hurting people by believing in that way,” she said. “I hear a lot of sad stories about people from Christian households of whose family disowned them, or who don’t believe what they’re doing is right. The family believes it is a sin. People say that the Bible says we should be in the world but not of the world, but I think that we should be changing with the world. So, we should also be changing in relationships, in relation to the world. And I think that some (not all) Christians seem to be stuck, like they’re not willing to change for whatever reason.”

I asked Jisun how she interprets that quote: to be “in the world but not of the world.” To her, it’s a quote that speaks directly to Christian people as advice: be of the world, but don’t do what other people do. Don’t be easily tempted. She compared it to the Bible’s stories of human sacrifice to the appeasement of gods or goddesses, normalized by society but not seen as moral by God.

All in all, Jisun believes that being in the world is connecting with other humans.

“I remember one time a Christian asked me what I talk about with other non-Christians,” she recalled. “And that question dumbfounds me because, it’s like, how do you talk to people normally? I don’t know how, but it seems that person doesn’t talk to anyone outside of church, so she doesn’t know how to talk to people who are not Christian.”

Jisun will talk to anyone and everyone. In fact, among her favorite things are people, language, and books. She speaks “three-and-a-half” languages (English, Korean, Spanish, and her ghost language, which she understands but doesn’t speak well, Chinese). Currently, she's learning Finnish, as she has been accepted into a post-graduate program in Finland (though, her program and move are currently on hold due to COVID-19).

During our photoshoot, I learned Jisun owns Harry Potter books in two languages (though I recently discovered that she has also acquired it in French). Wandering around her home and bedroom, it was something I realized about Jisun’s passion for reading, as well. Books are another key to unlocking worlds real, fictional, fantastical, and unknown. They are bridges, even to places as faraway as Fiji. And they are an effective way of learning new languages.

“Languages are like a bridge between you and another person,” she explained, “because when I’m speaking your language, I’m crossing the bridge to you, or if you speak my language, you’re crossing the bridge to me.” She also describes languages as keys to other worlds that you may have never known about before.

That's Jisun's main goal: to travel to other worlds – specifically broadly, every single Spanish-speaking country. Why? Because she loves Spanish and people, of course!

She’s fascinated by not only language but linguistics, as well. The nuances of Spanish communication amaze Jisun, like the varying dialects and accents so dependent on country, the difference in addressing a person based off their age (which is similar to Korean in some ways, there being different verb conjugations reflecting the age or status of your conversation partner), or simply the fun in slang.

She’s also in it for the food.

Using Discord for discussions with people around the world (in Spanish, of course), Jisun learns about culture and food. For instance, what do you eat in Peru? What do you eat in Colombia? Do you put meat inside an arepa in Colombia?

Food and language are very alike. There are many different ways to accomplish the same thing. They both provide connections to people, as bridges and keys.

"The Japanese have a word for eating something just because it's near you, not because you're hungry, but because you're bored," she taught me. That word is "kuchisabishii," which is especially relatable during this period of quarantines and lockdowns. "Actually, one thing I've always wanted to find out is how Spanish speakers see the state of being, because there are two words for 'to be' in Spanish: 'ser,' which is more permanent, and 'estar,' which is more temporary."

We'd switched gears to linguistics, a series of bridges within language, and another one of Jisun's passions. There's an age-old question in linguistics: Does your native language shape the way you view the world, or is language simply based on our perception?

For example: "I watched a video about how the word 'death' in German is a 'male noun,' so if a German person had to draw a person to personify death, it would be a man. But in Spanish-speaking cultures, they would draw a woman personifying death."

I asked Jisun if she knew the French phrase “l’appel du vide,” or “call of the void,” which translates best into English as “intrusive thoughts.” It’s the irrational temptation to jump or drive off a cliff. Have you ever wondered, during a job interview, what would happen if you just suddenly punched or kissed the interviewer? You would never do it, but it’s a universal, senseless, ludicrous human phenomenon of creeping thoughts.

Jisun introduced another untranslatable word from the Korean language: “nunchi.” She explained, “It’s being observant, having common sense, and being in tune with other people, all at the same time. Let’s say, first of all, before you get up from the table, someone thinks that you’re finished with all the food and asks you, ‘Oh, do you want me to clean up for you?’ even before you get up. That would be him having nunchi.” She added it’s someone getting the door for you or doing something for someone because they can sense they will ask or will need it done at some point. That’s all nunchi, too.

"Nunchi" may be a word specific to Korea, but its concept, to me, seems to implicitly characterize those values that Jisun holds so dear. How fitting that an untranslatable word can be so universally understood.

**Jisun is a writer and a blogger. To read more about her, check out this link to her website.**