Resolution for this year (or for all years to come)
Resolution for this year (or for all years to come): 올바른 사랑을 부지런히 실천할것. To love accurately, and actively.
Despite love being an inherently convoluted concept, 2023 came with a series of experiences and reflections that presented me with a very specific and concrete form of love that I want to practice.
To love is to accept
Intimate relationship is a combination of:
• 共感 mutuality - knowing that you feel what I feel
• 理解 understanding - knowing that you know why I feel the way I feel
• 受容 acceptance - knowing that you are okay with (and even appreciate) how I feel
Eventually, to love is to accept, for the person to feel affirmed for being the specific person they are and are becoming. Until now, I held mutuality and understanding as prerequisites for acceptance. And this year, I have learnt that it is love that can fuel the capability to accept, even when mutuality and understanding are not there. And that acceptance will be powerful, when they are unconditional. Mutuality and understanding will make the acceptance to be more effortless, but loving is not about what is easier.
In April of 2023, I travelled Copenhagen and Stockholm with Hiroki, whose ability to recognize and appreciate beauty is stunningly admirable and adorable. At Fotografiska, we saw an exhibition by an artist who reproduced her mom’s life into a short film, in an attempt to better understand the mom’s nonsensical life decision (to flee her motherland as a mail bride). In the final interview with the mother, her final remark for the daughter was: “I don’t need you to understand me, I need you to love me.”
In June of 2023, I met an important person, who happens to be stoic and practical, quite the opposite to my sentimental and romantic self. In many of my charged moments, his statement of “I love you, hence I want to understand you” carried an immense sense of security that the butterflies of “I want to understand you, so I can love you” cannot compare. I deeply respect and appreciate his talent to love, decisively and intuitively.
In 2023, i normally spent my commute talking to my mom on the phone. One of the joys of growing older is to be able to transform the relationship with parents from caregiver and caretaker, to a human to another human. My mom, who is also on the stoic side, often left me alone in my emotions as a child. But as I build a friendship with this person, I realize how lucky I am to be fated to love someone who is so vastly different from me. I have no choice but to want to understand her, with the inevitable and unconditional force of love.
To love is to accept, and it took me a long time to accept that.
To love is to practice In March of 2023, I visited Phuong in Vietnam, my friend and a sister, a fellow dreamer and a mighty carer. Marrying Lan and bringing Thy to the world in the US all during the pandemic, it was her first time visiting her homeland with her “new family”, as a mother and a daughter-in-law.
Phuong and Lan’s schedule was completely packed, taking care of 6 months old and accommodating both sides of family and friends. They were exhausted, physically and mentally. In the midst of a busy schedule, Phuong and Lan had planned for a single event only for themselves - a concert by their favorite singer. But right before the concert, Phuong noticed that Lan’s energy level was barely afloat. Phuong checked in, the two discussed, and then the two dived into dividing and conquering the logistics for me to become Phuong’s date for the night, and for Lan to save the evening for himself.
There I witnessed the operationalized definition of Love: To be able to recognize where the other is at, and to bring what the other needs, pleasantly, selflessly, and unsolicitedly as appropriate. To have enough trust to be comfortable in being honest, and to have enough maturity in not being disappointed from the others’ honesty.
“Constructive” is the most accurate adjective to describe the love of Phuong and Lan. From the moment they started as a long distance couple, to accomplish major life events during the pandemic, their love was a stream of “what can I do to make this work”. What I can see is the logistical adjustments they willingly made for the other, but what I can feel is the trust and faith that those are built upon.
In December of 2023, I attended their much-due wedding. They had three separate ceremonies, one for their ancestors, another for their parents, and finally for themselves. Family members (in a wide definition including those who were friends-turn-family, like me) took up responsibilities to look after Thy and host international guests throughout the three-days event. Phuong told me she’s thinking of eventually returning home, because she wants Thy to also have this tight community to learn the love and care from. A beautiful act of passing down the legacy of love and care as an ordinary habit, which I wish to be available in places near and far.
Love is more than what is felt and perceived, it’s a blueprint for what you want to construct. I would like to practice love, attentively and diligently, without calculation and complacency.
2023 was a year that struck me that my life will inevitably comprise of having loved ones spread all across the globe. And that realization came with a strong desire to be more intentional in loving these very valuable ones.
I want to love accurately - for my loved ones to be accepted and embraced. I want to love actively - by expressing, servicing, and providing.
Jauh dimata, Dekat dihati - Far in eyes, close in hearts.
May 2024 be full of love, and more love, from all these love.