Sunday, March 14, 2010
if love is an ocean wide,we'll swim in the tears we cry

yesterday at sumin's house, we watched the hoilday, and i know that the two of you both like the show, but i dont! haha. i think that the typical romance show perpetuates an inaccurate mindset in relation to love and relationships.

firstly, i don't believe in sleeping around, especially with someone you've just met, or starting a relationship with physical intimacy before emotional, mental (and maybe even spiritual?) intimacy.

secondly, WHY ARE ALL THE GUYS RICH TALL AND HANDSOME WHILE ALL THE GIRLS ARE PRETTY, HARWORKING AND MEEK? i am embarrassed to say that there has been a point in time where i bought into the whole you-must-be-equal-in-social-status,looks,he-cant-be-poor etc etc. fallacious school of thought, coupled with the my-boyfriend-is-really-good-to-me-and-i-measure-his-love-based-on-the-number-of-expensive-things-he-buys-me-and-i-deserve-all-these-things of which the latter i am extremely guilty of, and is completely wrong. i mean, ok there's gender inequality in the workplace such that your efforts don't get the same amount of payoff as compared to if you were a guy, and ok there's the carrying the baby and giving birth part too,which also is a double whammy of shorts for a person with 2 X chromosomes when it comes to earning money. but before the kids and everything, one can work/rely on one's own parents so why act as if being treated to meals and being driven around is something that one deserves? this is like us girls imposing gender bias on our own selves if we have that attitude even as we ourselves feel bitter about gender inequality. i think for me it wasn't about the things per se, but the feeling that you're definitely loved cuz the other person is willing to do so, and you know how it is when other people say oh, my bf did this this this, or that. guess it stirs up insecurity maybe? and jealousy. but so the next time i get the chance, im going to rise above that. cuz hoarding/clinging on tight to as many material things as possible is positively correlated to insecurity right? instead i'll hold on to faith and trust. (:

oh yah, back to the rich/hot etc part, why are only people of the same social station or better worthy of us loving them? (i mean in general this is how we're taught to measure guys while guys are expected to love girls only because they have awesome personalities) so what happens to everyone else? oh yah and this annoys me also because it's like smacking yourself in the head because you believe that your only way of so called having success or "moving up" in life is wholly pegged to the guy you manage to snag. it's the whole self-perpetuation of gender bias thing again. why do like 90% (at the very least) of shows have rich hot boys and poor nice girls? maybe it's the stuff of every girl's secret fantasy, and after all it's not real life so artistic freedom should be given, but i think that the argument against the perpetuation of this mindset is similar to that for being anti-barbie. it creates unrealistic expectations and emphasis on only materialistic indicators of who a person is. but you don't live with his huge pile of money (ok maybe the hot bod?) but you definitely don't have engaging conversations with both the former and the latter, and the sole reason for loving someone can't be those either right?

im sure that there will be people who disagree with me, and i don't mind at all. i know that im pretty idealistic, and maybe you'll say that im fortunate enough to not have to worry about the very real, practical aspect of things, and i agree too that i am lucky in that respect. i have been brought up by parents whose lives truly revolve around their children, and i must say that maybe it's partly due to that, but my understanding of what love is has been (and probably still is) pretty flawed. i think how i used to love was/is pretty childish, where everything is black and white, and i was arrogant enough to believe, maybe not consciously but definitely it's there, that since a person loves me, their world revolves around me. couldn't have been more wrong. and i can't say i know how to love now, and my learning curve doesn't look so good, but at least i think im beginning to understand a little bit more now.

and at the end of the day, i believe that there's nothing impossible that we cannot do if we love, after all isn't the greatest redeeming factor about us humans who destroy things and hurt each other more than any other living thing on the planet that we have the ability to love? i think that the measure for the "success" of a relationship isn't how few things there are to fight about, but how many things have been overcome together instead. and being happily ever after doesn't really exist, at least in the literal sense, and no matter what relationships will definitely be fraught with misunderstandings, arguments, differing point of views etc. (this is also the reason why i think movies are not a good representation cuz there is usually very little fighting between the two people, they tend to fight more with the ex, and just before the credits roll they're all smiles for ever and ever, because the implicit assumption is that all the hard parts have been over and done with and it'll be smooth-sailing all the way)

the important part isn't about the being so compatible there's no fighting (i mean, how truly compatible can two people ever be such that there's never anything to fight about? even parents, with 25++ years of experience still fight), but about the forgiveness, reconciliation and acceptance. and putting the other person's feelings above your own, all of which i am so bad at, especially the last two. i think the actual loving of someone isn't the hard part cuz it's like a bacterial infection of some particularly antibiotic resistant strain. like MRSA. it creeps up on you without you knowing how or when and sometimes even why, and you dont know you've been infected until you start to show the symptoms. but getting rid of it is so difficult, phagocytosis and T cells, NK cells, cytokines, all kinds of antibiotics don't really work even though you want them to so badly. oops got carried away with my metaphor. but the point is, loving someone can be quite easy, but for me the execution part and the letting go part is like asking my non-antigen activated immune system to get rid of the infection totally, and asking my puny platelets to do so respectively. (ok maybe i might have carried the metaphor too far, but my point is the former isn't so perfect while the latter is just an exercise in futility)


"love is patient, love is kind. it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. it is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. it always protects, always hopes, always perseveres."
1 corinthians 13:4-7

i hope that i will be given the chance to love and be loved like that one day.