What is your definition of True Love ?

Topic: WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF TRUE LOVE ?

A true thing is something touchable that you can clearly see and feel. How about something intangible whose reality you can never touch but only believe and feel to the deepest of your breath ?

Love is hard to define. According to dictionary’s definition, Love is a strong passionate affection for another person. According to Biblical definition, “Love is patient and kind; Love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things; believes all things; hopes all things; endures all things.”

Only three words “I love you” seem to be able to help one express his feeling for the one he loves, but just a few words can never be enough to help one define what Love really is. Therefore, people always try to reach for the meaning of True Love although they may need to spend several time, or even all the time of their whole life on searching.

Few days ago, while surfing the internet in hope of figuring out a quite satisfactory definition of Love, I accidentally came across a short story which really touched my heart. It is a true story that did happen in Japan...

A man was tearing down his wooden wall in a plan to renovate his 10-year-old house while he suddenly found a lizard stuck in the hollow space between the wall layers because the nail from outside was hammered into one of its feet. Then when he checked the nail, it turned out to be nailed 10 years ago when the house was first built.

At that moment, the man was quite confused. He wondered how this lizard could survive in such a position for 10 years, in a dark wall partition without moving a single step, so he decided to pause his work and observed the lizard. Later, not knowing from where it came, he saw another lizard appear with food in its mouth.

He was stunned and at the same time, touched deeply. Another lizard had been feeding the stuck one untiringly for 10 years long without giving up hope on its partner.

As people always say, Love can perform miracles!

Even a small creature like a lizard, which surely doesn’t know the definition of Love, and will never do, can love like that. Then why people always waste their time wondering about and searching for the answer to their question about Love without noticing that sometimes Love is just hiding underneath simplest and littlest things they do to or make for others? And Love itself does not have a particular definition, each person will have their own one.

Frankly speaking, at the age of 20, I myself have never ever experienced the taste of Love before. However, for what I have got through reading novels, or watching films, or observing people around me, I believe that “Love doesn't make the world go around. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” [Franklin P. Jones ].

In my own opinion, my parents' love for each other is a real example of a True Love. Since they were together, they have learned to look beyond the problems and doubts and realize that no matter what task may come to hand, their love can find a way through it. Together they have given me a happy family, a happy life. The Love that my parents keep for each other is not too enthusiastic like it usually is in novels that I read, there are not too many sweet-covered words either. Their Love is merely gentle but unshakable. And I strongly believe that nothing out there will be able to separate them. And the Love like this, to me, is a real True Love.

However, Love is not always sweet and easy, it is not for the hearts which are afraid of breaking, nor for the souls which fear for dying, as Marc Levy once said “There are some pains of love that time cannot erase, they leave deep in smile such scars that will never be healed.” [Vous revoir – 2005]. Love sometimes needs to be challenged before coming to the happy ending. Even so, no matter how hard it is, just to love and to be loved is a great happiness in one’s life.

After all, although there is still no really satisfactory definition for True Love, one will surely be able to acknowledge it when it comes to him, because True Love is something intangible whose reality one can never touch but only believe and feel to the deepest of his breath.

The Girl who played Go

The Girl who played Go – Shan Sa

To choose a novel, which I have to admit that I love the most, among many other impressive novels available in my bookshelf, is really difficult. And more difficult than that is to write about this one in order to express my own feeling just within 500 words. In fact, I myself love reading happy-ending novels which are like the fairy tales: eventually the prince and the princess will be able to live happily forever with each other. And frankly speaking, I intended to write about this kind of books when I received this assignment. But after quite a long time considering, I decided to write about a novel written by a Chinese author, which actually doesn't have any happy ends for any characters at all. This novel is The girl who played Go, written by Shan Sa.

The Girl who Played Go is told in alternating chapters, by a sixteen-year-old Chinese girl living in a Manchurian town in the late 1930s and a Japanese soldier who eventually comes to be posted there. It seems that they have nothing in common. The girl, at the age of an adolescent, is more concerned with intimations of her own womanhood than the escalating hostilities between her countrymen and their Japanese occupiers. The soldier, who is bound by his family-esteem, is busy following his desire to devote all his life for his beloved country. However, because of the fate, when the Japanese soldier is sent there undercover, dressed up like a Chinese man, they meet each other. They spend their time playing the Go with each other in the Square of a Thousand Winds, they observe each other, and they note the changes each other is going through. Through the Go, they can understand each other, they can read the mind buried deep down inside each other, but they never get into any sort of conversation, even just exchange their names.

During their time enjoying the game of Go, they seem to forget about the cruel world outside with a lot of problems and misery they have to face up to, as the soldier says: "[...] when I am in the middle of a game of Go, I am completely intoxicated and cut off from the outside world.". They seem to be like that forever. They may keep returning day after day to continue their game if the Japanese do not capture many of the insurgents, which affects both of the go-players. The girl is worried about her fate and eventually, she moves to action. She leaves her hometown, and also leaves her youth there. At this moment in time, the two are separated. They are separated to prepare for a miserable meeting in the future, which is surely unexpected.

To me, this book is not an easy one to read. It reveals a horrible and disordered period which is full of conflicts: the conflicts between the two different people yearning to belong to each other but cannot, the conflicts between China and Japan, the conflicts that progresses locally in those same small moves as a game of Go does, which all make my mind occupied after reading. But there is one truth that cannot be denied: Shan Sa has succeeded in creating such a beautiful story like this.

It is beautiful in the way Shan Sa describes the ideal, the iron will of a soldier who strives for devoting all his life to his beloved country without any fear of dying.

It is beautiful in a normal-but-not-peaceful life of a girl who is in the middle of adolescent and adult.

It is beautiful in the way the Mother of the soldier sacrifices her own happiness for her country [ her husband and her sons all leave the family to join the army ]. She must be the symbol of the typical Japanese women.

It is beautiful in many other characters such as Man, Kinh, Duong, who are full of enthusiasm. They love with all their hearts, and they never hesitate to devote their youth to protect their own country. They pass away but their deaths will forever remain in the minds of readers.

And there still have more and more people who make this story so beautiful. It is so beautiful that even I don't understand why I cannot breathe while reading some last pages of this novel. It is not until the end that I can realize that the two main characters haven't had their names mentioned yet. To the girl, the soldier is just " a Stranger ", and to the soldier, the girl is just simply " a Chinese Girl ". This small detail seems to be so big when it makes me feel lost, just like they will disappear for ever and I can never find these two persons once again. And due to this fact, it hurts me a lot when the two of them meet each other again, but the first time with their real conditions.

"Do you realize me?" says the soldier.

"Don't be afraid, I will follow you. I will protect you in the Neverland." says the soldier.

"I know that we will continue playing our game in that place far far away." says the soldier.

"In order to see my beloved one, I did try to keep my eyes opened." says the soldier. And these are his last words. Till then, they haven’t been able to exchange their names yet.

Frankly speaking, up till now, I myself don't really know whether this is a happy end or not. Anyway, eventually, they can live happily with each other in the Neverland. And as the soldiers says, I believe that they will be able to continue their incomplete game there, and to begin playing many other ones, forever and ever.