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[howard2005]

Love and Trade

I have heard of such a statement, "Love is a kind of hurt, but hurt is also a kind of love." It seems very popular that hurt can be done by the name of love, just like what An Jiahe has done to his wife in the sitcom "Never Talk to Strangers". When his wife talks with strangers, he will be tortured by tremendous jealousy and beat her heavily out of control. When the abuse is over, he regrets for what he has done to her, and asks for her forgiveness. He always explains that his jealousy results from his love. According to him, there is no jealousy without love. It seems his jealousy is an inevitable result of his strong love, and his love should be responsible for his mistakes. What an absurd logic he has! Then, a question comes to my mind, what on earth does his love mean?

Suppose you are a man, when you love a woman but she does not love you at all, or when you put unnecessary feeling on her and bring her oppression and burden, even pain and torture, your love is undoubtedly a kind of hurt. When you occupy her area for a long time, invade her psychological space, or prevent her from acting freely, your love then becomes a kind of offence. In my eyes, such love cannot be counted as true love, and it is a pretended or superficial love at most.

The ordinary love is based on need. Have you ever considered why you will love someone? It is just because she can satisfy your need, but you will not admit this fact. Such love is essentially a kind of self-love. You are weak, so you only care yourself most, and you need someone to light up your life and give you strength. In fact you are a beggar of love. The love based on need cannot last long, because your need will change along with the time. When she can no longer meet your new need, your love will naturally fade away. Therefore, the love inspired from outside only has a short span of life. But on the contrary, if you are rich in love and want to share it with others, just like the sun is shining down on everything, only such love can lead you to genuine happiness.

In my opinion, true love should be based on sharing. If you have something good, you share it with others; only under such situations can you understand a little about what true love is. You will never understand true love until you are ready to share your best with others without any special expectation. It is an unbroken truth that there is no love if there is no giving.

When you give something to others and you expect others to thank you for it, as long as you have the thought in your mind, you are still apart from the true love, because what you have done is nothing but a trade. Your giving is for your own sake, that is to say, you want others to thank you for your giving, and your giving has its goal of expecting more repayments. If others are indifferent to your giving, you will feel disappointed, even a little hurt. If your so-called kindness enjoys no expected response from others, it will hurt you deeply in your mind, and you will think what you have done is nothing but waste of time.

In fact, when analyzing myself, I find I am not the exception. If I gain no response from others, a little disappointment will attack my heart. Many things, done by the name of love, often result in not happiness but disappointment, just because they are not a sharing but a trade. A successful trade means that we gain more with less pay, which is based on the principle of selfishness. But, true love means that you give without taking repayment into account, which is based on the principle of unselfishness. Trade must be based on the selfishness; if you do trade according to the principle of unselfishness, then you are doomed to suffer a loss in your business.

Love must be based on the unselfishness; if you pursue love according to the principle of selfishness, then you are doomed to suffer jealousy in your heart. Trade and love are two extremes in this world; one is the representative of selfishness, while another is the representative of unselfishness. The world needs not only trade but also love, if we compare love to the light, then we should compare trade to the dark. Trade is related to our mind, but love is related to our heart.

In my eyes, mind helps us gain more interest, but heart helps us gain more happiness. The key is how to keep a balance between mind and heart. When we are doing business, we need sharp mind to analyze various situations and make proper decisions to win more profit, but when we are pursuing love, we need sincere heart to share what we have with our friends or lovers to enjoy more happiness. In my opinion, the marriage is a combination of both trade and love, that is to say, we not only need mind to analyze but also need heart to share if we want to make a marriage work.

Written on Thursday, August 25, 2005

[howard2005]

Three Kinds of Education

Even my opinion is not good, if I can offer a few commonplace remarks by way of introduction so that others may come up with valuable opinions, then my effort won't go to waste. A person, who is a hermit, publishes his articles without any praise or criticism from others. He won't know what others will think of or talk about his articles. So even his opinion is wrong, he need not worry that others will accept his mistakes without consideration.

We are born utterly weak, so we need strength; we are born nothing at all, so we long for help; we are born ignorant of everything, so we are in great need of judgmental ability. All things that we lack when born but we need when growing up, can be obtained through education.

We can enjoy education from nature, people or things. It's the education from nature that inwardly develops our talent and organs. It's the education from people that teaches us how to make use of this development. It's the education from things that brings us good experiences through various things affecting us.

So anyone is cultivated by three kinds of teachers -- nature, people and things. To a student, if different educations on him from three kinds of teachers conflict, then such education is not good and can never accord with his own heart forever. To a student, if three different educations on him are agreeable and approach the same aim, then he can achieve his goal and live a meaningful life. We'd say that such a student is well educated.

Of these three different educations, the education from nature totally goes beyond our ability. Only some aspects of the education from things can be determined by us. And only education from people can be really controlled by us; but our control is just assumed, because who can control all words and behaviors around a child?

Parents will play a very important role in their children's growth, and to some extent, their educational thoughts and behaviors will determine their children's future, so it's an unshirkable responsibility for them to know how to educate their children well. It's natural that I become very interested in education because I already have my son now. How to educate him is very important in my life because he is my hope and future. I should learn more things about education in the knowledge that no preparation often results in failure. I must try my best to absorb more valuable things from books, others and my personal experiences.

It's very common that the parents either do more or do less on their children's education. Natural education is easy to say but hard to do. If parents don't think how to guide their children but just allow their children to lead a free-wheeling life, of course it will get into a bigger trouble. The key point is that parents should really know or understand their children, but it cannot be done without great patience on observing their children very carefully. I always think that understanding is the foundation of education, no matter how old the educatee is.

It's very wrong to take something for granted and take actions according to it. Because every child is different, what we should do is to know our own child by careful observation and take correspondent methods to deal with them. In my opinion, it is just empty talk without careful observation and genuine understanding. The principle is easy, but the practice is far more difficult. If you don't mind, I have a question for you. Have you had your own child, and if you really have, then how much time have you spent on your child and how much have you understood your child? Most of your child's time has been spent with you or with your parents? Time matters. If you just know these educational principle but you have spent too less time on your child because of your own work, then it's no use to further discuss about this topic. I just know that any true understanding is a very time-consuming job.

As for me, I shall lay more stress on the first hand education. Only what I have learned from my own observation and hands-on experience can be a genuine and eternal wealth in my life, while what I have learned from books or others is just useful referential information in my mind, which cannot be a part of my life if it does not go through my own experience. From my son's birth to now, his every single growth cannot escape from my eyes, because he has always been living with me, and I cherish the beautiful time of playing with him. I am so grateful that God gave me such a lovely son and he really brought me many unexpected surprises.

Written on May 23, 2005

[howard2005]

Marriage

Love is just love! Love is hard to define. The pure love exists not in real life but in literature works. The realistic love tastes like cocktail, whose flavor is a long story to tell. Of course, it is harder to describe the flavor of marriage.

Wretched and patched marriages can be found everywhere in this modern society. If responsibility still works in the marriage, the divorce rate may not go on an increasing trend. Modern people are too smart to endure any passionless love or lovless marriage. However, passion behaves like violent storm, how long can it last? One month or a little longer.

Without any distance, the hazy beauty and mystery between the couples vanish little by little. After all sweet words are digested by the stomach, sarcastic comments gradually become their potluck, so they begin to ache in the stomach and regret their original choice. They think it is their blindness that results in the present awful situation.

The age is so open that there are many solutions to this problem. One can choose one of these solutions as he likes. A clear-cut person is to jump out of the cage and gain total freedom by means of divorce. A hesitant person is to endure the current spouse and secretly find a sweetie to warm his stomach. If a sweetie is hard to find, a considerate harlot may be available to ease his hunger and thirst.

Anyway, none of these solutions can be taken without enough money. A poor guy has to endure without choice, thus he tries to earn more money in order to take initiatives and enjoy his desirable life. Money makes the world run, so love and marriage bow their heads to money. What a lamentable age!

Love radiates extraordinary splendor, but money works as its core motivity when it is carefully examined. Who is silly to be allured by those sweet words without the charming scent of money behind them? It finally comes to an obsolete conclusion, "Money blinds people's eyes."

Written on December 17, 2006