Dear Zoe,
Today, I’d like to talk about love and the story of how I met your mother. Don’t worry, unlike the famous TV show, it won’t take 9 years and a crappy ending.
When people asked me this question, I would usually answer that we met in this upbeat club in Jakarta. It was raining hard that day, and I saw a girl who was dancing happily with her friends, and under that beautiful, dizzying strobe light, I felt a thunderbolt struck my chest… but I’m kidding.
I didn’t meet your mother in a club; we actually met at a small church gathering organized by your uncle, and contrary to the popular love story, there was no lightning bolt moment. We started as friends, became the best of friends, and have been one ever since.
And that is why I started with that false story at the beginning of this letter, because contrary to the love stories you watch on TV, falling in love is not love.
The great psychiatrist and author M. Scott Peck said that “falling in love is not an act of will. It is a conscious choice. Thus, falling in love is not love. For love to be love, you have to make a conscious choice to love that person.
When you ask a person who fell in love, they will say that they can’t help but feel love for the other person. They can’t eat, they can’t sleep, and this image of the beloved keeps popping into their head. It was hormonal and was usually triggered by a person’s external qualities.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that falling in love will not result in marriage. Some of my friends managed to pull this off and have a happy marriage. However, I suspect a shift in their psychological makeup had taken place, namely, they went from: “I can’t help but fall in love with you” to “I choose to love you no matter what.”
And the key is in the “no matter what” part. As one day you may experience, you will see that the thrill you get from falling in love will turn to disappointment.
Why disappointment? Because just like you and I, the beloved is an imperfect creature who is prone to getting angry, confuse, farts, burps, and yes, needs to take a dump. Even the most beautiful person can’t escape their human nature.
And at that point, both you and the beloved will come to a fork road. Love will ask you, “Would you choose to love this man/woman despite their many flaws?”
If you both answered “yes, I will love him/her with all of my heart despite their flaws,” then congratulations, you’ve found love.
Because Zoe, that is what love is: love is the ability to give a part or all of yourself to an imperfect person who is full of flaws. Love is not love until you can love the whole person: their good side and their bad side.
The Christian religion (or myth, depending on your point of view) demonstrated this point when God, the almighty being of the universe, sent His Son to die a horrible death on the cross for all mankind’s sins. God didn’t wait until humans became perfect or learned to behave themselves, God sent His Son when humans are sinful, evil creatures.
According to this definition, then, you will only be able to love a few people, and that’s okay. Let not the world cheapen the word love and give you the idea that you can’t love everybody, because the fact of the matter is you can’t.
Loving a person, the whole person, is not easy, and I’m still learning to do it to this day, but it is not impossible, and with time, you can improve on it.
I hope Zoe, that you will find the love of your life.