journal/

on-going mostly unedited stream of thoughts

some views on love

Around this time last year the partner went away for work, we were newly in a relationship for less than a month and she was going to be gone for almost equal that time. I told her then I would accompany her for the next year’s trip if we were still together.

In that time while she was gone there were plenty of nights with disrupted sleep while we tried to call each other across timezones. She would put me on a skype video while wandering the streets and getting lost among the forests. The past few weeks it was kind of surreal that we are now physically together wandering the same streets that I experienced across a video screen a year earlier.

People give us strange looks when they ask us about the relationship and we would almost always preface everything with, “if we are still together then, we would do [x]”. It was seen as being pessimistic or non-commital.

But we’ve both been inflicted with too much change to believe in a fairytale. To me, having an acute awareness that change can happen anytime isn’t being pessimistic, it is having a deep respect and reverence for life. Things can change and will change.

In problem solving we don’t simply ignore the condititions and be blindly optimistic — to solve problems requires a ruthless pragmatism to acknowlege the risks involved. I think I’ll rather love with a honesty and still hope for the best, rather than to foolishly hope that everything will work out as long as we try.

You have no idea how much fruitless trying I’ve seen and experienced.

But I have slowly learned that paradoxes exist everywhere in life, life gets much easier to comprehend once we grow the capacity to contain them. I wish for us to last for the rest of our lifetimes despite the odds and yet I wouldn’t be very much surprised if we don’t.

We both believe having this mindset makes us love harder and treasure the time together much more. We try not to take the relationship for granted just because we are promised to each other, I don’t ask of her to stay with me till death do us part or through sickness and wealth. I am too broken to ask of anybody to stay while I wade through my own breakage. For me, love is to free, to want the best for her, with or without me.

The commitment to desire an expanding wholeness for someone — that to me is true love. And because of this, I love her and us with a poignancy that maybe even I would never completely grasp.

One thought on “some views on love”

  1. Anna Simpson says:

    Winnie, a story someone told me yesterday: ‘A teacher holds up a $10 note, and asks the class who wants it. Most of the kids raise their hand. Then she screws it up. She asks who wants it anyway. The kids shrug and the same ones raise their hands. Then the teacher throws the note on the floor and stamps on it, and asks again. The same kids raise their hands…’

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