What is love?
Have you ever wondered what love is (I mean romantic love)? And do you think we need love in our lives?
I have a foreign friend who I meet every weekend to help him study Vietnamese and to exchange culture or opinion on many aspects of life. There was a day that by accident, we talked about love. He asked me: “Have you ever encountered a person that you know exactly 100% perfect for you at the first sight?”. I answered: “No, I have not but I don’t really believe in what is called love at the first sight”. He said: “I did experience before. Even though I can not continue with that girl, it is still the best memory of my life.” I was curious: “How could you know that was the 100% perfect girl for you?”. As usual, the answer was: “It is hard to explain but it is like a flash of lightning goes through your body when you make eye contact with the one. Immediately, you know he is born for you”. Feeling hopeless to get any more logical answer, I tried to change the other way of asking: “I see. So from your point of view, what is love and do you think we need love in our lives?” and that was the start of our discussion.
He hesitated a little bit just like he needed to have time to order his words. He said slowly: “I think love is like a transition in your life from working alone to working in a team of two. Let me give an example. We are born alone and then taught how to live alone. Of course, we have family, friends, neighbors, etc. but they are different from your wife or husband since at night, just only you sleep alone on your bed. I mean for the first quarter of your life, you are well-trained to live alone. So, there is no doubt that you can live alone. However, life will change and people you meet will change you as well. Someday, if lucky enough, you will meet a person that you feel like you don’t want to work alone anymore but instead, you want to work in a team of two. That is the moment love comes in. Wait a bit here. Though love came in, it doesn’t mean that you will end there and get a “happy ever after” love. In fact, the real journey just begins. You have to work with your teammate, spend time learning collaborating skills, care about your teammate to improve team spirit, and many other things. However, if you feel that working in a team is happier than working alone, that is love.” His explanation is really interesting to me so I kept asking: “So what if I tried the life of two and then I don’t like it. Can it be understood that love is not a must in our lives?”. He said: “I don’t think so. I still believe love is necessary but we can have a more open-minded definition of love. With the conditions that you have tried working with many teammates and tried hard to get along with them but still don’t get anyone, there may be two reasons. First, you are not lucky enough to find the right one in your life. Second, you are complete by your own.”
I extremely like the idea that love is just a transition in your life so it may or may not happen. If it happens, thank god I am blessed. If it doesn’t happen no matter how hard I tried, thank god for giving me the complete soul since I don’t need to be with someone else but myself. In the end, I think we don’t need to be jealous of those who find their 100% perfect lovers but instead, we should be jealous of those who know they are 100% perfect on their own.
