redefine

Today my professor talked of this concept of love, how there are different ones across times and cultures. Of our own, she said: "we have this notion of love that must necessarily contain reciprocity." Essentially, we cannot understand a love that isn't reciprocated. We think it isn't love. An unrequited crush, maybe. A mistake, definitely. But a love, never.

Then I saw this Bollywood where the man who reciprocates his love's love dies and passes her on to another man. The girl said: you love so much that you were going to leave love for me even after you die? Even if it's a love that isn't yours?

Later her mother told her: Make a mistake today, it's a girl's decision. Realize it tomorrow, it's a woman's regret.

There's all this time constraint almost, on choosing from a pool that doesn't include the ideal. In Chinese there's a word that comes up repeatedly with the talk of love, 缘分. It can be translated to something like 'fate' or 'destiny' or 'compatibility', specifically relating to two lovers. Usually, it's used in longing utterances, loaded with unfulfillment, perhaps from a star-crossed heroine's mouth: there isn't enough 缘分 between us.

I've always rejected that idea. What is this about some arbitrary, intangible force having a say in such an important part of my life? How can something other than myself prevent me from living my ideal life?

But I think now the better question should be, why should I even define love to be significant part of an ideal life? Isn't it possible to only possess it a short time, or only as an incomplete, one-sided ghost of a thing--or, horror of horrors, not at all?

The possibility is so huge and incomprehensible to me I hardly know what to do with it. It's here like that still still lake in the previous post. Looking at it face to face, I come up a little short of breath.

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