Gone, Still Here
The other night, without thinking, I reached for my phone to send a message. It was something small—something I would have said without even considering it before. A passing thought, a line from a song, the kind of thing that doesn’t feel important until there’s no one on the other end to receive it. I stared at the screen for a moment, then set the phone back down. That quiet hesitation—that space where something used to exist—is where I’ve begun to understand inyeon in a way I never did before. In Korea, inyeon ( 인연 ) is often described as the unseen thread that connects people across time and circumstance. It’s rooted in Buddhist thought, the idea that relationships are shaped by countless causes and conditions, even extending beyond a single lifetime. There’s a saying that even brushing past someone on the street requires layers of inyeon , which makes the people who enter—and stay in—your life feel anything but accidenta...
