Dong-Shim

In Korean, innocence, like-mindedness, and child's mind all share the same word 'dong-shim'. True, in English too, innocence, naivety, and child's mind are synonyms of each other, but like-mindedness are made more analogous to semantics of empathy, harmony, or at the very least, agreement or unanimity. The two words, innocence and like-mindedness, are indeed different, yet on a face value, it doesn't seem too strange that they share the exact same letters in Korean. Rather, if given more thought it seems rather perfectly germane. One infers to the other. Innocence is a state of having open-mindedness, and similarly, like-mindedness is a state of having empathy.

It makes sense that for one to be empathetic, he or she understands the thoughts and feelings of others. Like-mindedness is a requisite. But to first initiate understanding and empathy, it's required for him or her to take a naive stance. As difficult it is to escape or avoid the tendencies of selfish human nature to predispose our understanding of one another in a limited frame of worldview, empathy or like-mindedness is derived from open minds and thoughts. While our life experiences may facilitate empathizing easier in many instances through similar experiences of hardships or joys, empathy goes a step further than mere coincidences or shallow kinship. I can't fully purport what the essence of empathy is, but I believe it's simply another facet of love, the kind of love that reaches out to strangers, cities, nations, and the unforeseens. Like other variations of love, empathy, too, requires one to work at it and be active in its process. Breaking down walls, predispositions, giving rooms, and giving the benefit of the doubt are all part of this process of constituting an open mind. And in effect, this naivety and unpretentious-ness breed empathy. Additionally, it works vice versa as well. Love, or empathy, may challenge and extend one's openness. The two words, innocence and like-mindedness, respectively describe the state of having empathy and being naive, the sort of innocence that's required for open-mindedness. Hence, they are appropriately linked through their mutual lexeme 'dong-shim', I believe.

Photo by 'customxx' titled 'dong-shim' via photo.naver.com