I was reviewing my son’s study the other night. He learned about the ‘infinite’ number (∞) during his math class. He was fascinated by its concept of infinity and incessantly babbled about it. On the other hand, I, a lover of abstract philosophy, felt intrigued to hear the word ‘infinity’ from my 13-year-old who is yet to comprehend our human life and death itself. So I asked him,
“Do you know the meaning of infinity?” “Yes.” “Explain it to me.”
“Do you want a scientific or unscientific answer?” “Both.”
“The first answer, the earth spins in infinity. The second, mother’s love is infinite!”
“Hah hah hah…you think so?” “Yes, I am sure!”
That made my day. Dictionary defines the meaning of ‘infinity’ as something that has no ending, limitless, boundless…etc. He thinks my love towards him represent the best of it all. How sweet he is, how much he has grown from that little bundle wrapped in a blanket, often crying all nights long for no apparent reason. Since then, as though I had fast forwarded time, he now can say pleasing things like this, which I knew he really meant it. Like any other mother who can’t help but to be lopsided and blind when it comes to her offspring, I, too, felt proud to hear such appreciation from him, despite I am not exactly the most affectionate nor patient type of mother (I am nagging and strict. He is afraid of me more than his father).
The word love always stirs up diversity of our human emotion as it is the most natural and instinctive desires for not only human but all living species. It is well known factors that the babies or lab mice boost up in their growth rate when they were regularly held and stroked by the caretakers compared to those weren’t. I don’t have much memories of my childhood because my parents were not the most affectionate types. But I had loving relatives and mother’s friends in her hometown. What I still remember distinctively are all those moments that I was praised and loved by them whenever we visited there, even as early as three to four years old. Like my parents, though, I believe in tough love than rosy sweet chocolate flavor ones. When it comes to love, my values are rather old fashioned and conservative like Confucius’. But I learned how to be sweet as well as to be strict about which my son knows the best.
When I first went to the US for study, “I love you” was the most common but uncomfortable expression for me to adapt. Teachers, friends, landlords…they often tagged those words at the end of our conversation even if we weren’t as close as family or lovers. Whenever I heard those words, I didn’t know how to respond except blurring out. I’ve gotten better with time but still I couldn’t use it so casually because I could not mean it. For me, love is something very intimate and delicate feeling that can be felt only when our hearts are open and truly connected. I honestly couldn’t feel that kind of love with outsiders, not even with myself. In those days I was pretty uptight and armored, to wear suits and heels to class when other course mates came in with T-shirts and slippers. My hubby had a hard time opening my heart when we first met. It is not that I had a heart cold like ice but too soft that I got hurt easily many times before. So I closed it off as a way to protect myself.
My first love was the class monitor in my third year of high school. Smart, tall and athletic with a strong leadership, she was the teachers’ pet. I was mediocre, short and clumsy with unimpressive timidity. She was everything that I was not. Teachers or friends alike, they hardly noticed that I even existed. She looked so afar from me when jumping and shooting balls during school basket ball games (I was a bench sitter). I secretly marked her in my heart. I felt every symptom of lovesick. She made my heart race and pound whenever I think or get the glimpses of her. I felt miserable when I couldn’t see her during long school holidays. One day I wrote her letters to express my intense feelings, a bold move for an assuming girl that I was at the time. She never wrote me back. But she did give me some attentions after that, like occasionally helping me with my study or sitting next to me in the canteen. I was happy as long as it lasted though it was just for few months as we were in the final year of high school. Soon we went about our separate ways with graduation and so did my feeling of which I thought was love then. In retrospect, it was more of admiration, than love, toward someone who was so much different than I at the time. Yet vulnerable feelings toward someone somehow triggered unconscious parts hidden in me. I suddenly became aware of my existence, desires and tendencies. I was much more tough and independent than I thought with a keen inclination toward learning and knowledge. She got married almost right after high school, settling as a mother and housewife early. I moved onto having more explorations and adventures for love and life.
I had few more heartaches since then, in search of the endless love kinds, but always falling for off-targets that were either not possible or unavailable. I felt burdened by the intense longing in my heart, strong desire for something subtle, ulterior than ordinary, mundane. I searched for lofty love, beautiful but mysterious, platonic than erotic. I couldn’t find one. Few years ding ding dong dong… I was the last single left among friends, colleagues and sisters. Feeling miserable and lonely, I wandered around in mountains and bookstores. Well, one day I woke up. I was looking for someone like a god not a man, but I rather not settle than compromising. I resolved myself for singlehood and to focus on spiritual paths instead because, in there, they say I could find divine love that is so perfect that doesn’t make my heart ever painful, anxious or sad. It would put my heart at ease, peaceful and blissful like sweet honey dew. I decided to find that love.
But love found me when I least expected, not in the flesh or dramatic way I had imagined but in the most unrecognizable way like how water soaks paper. When I met my then husband-to-be, he was no rich prince charming in white horse but with a weird beard and cheeky grin like a big teddy bear. But he was kind, caring and knowledgeable. More than anything, he understood me well when I talk about divine love in my broken English. Yet I didn’t know he would be my mate because he neither made my heart beat faster or anxious. But I felt safe and joyous when I was with him. He didn’t challenge me with feelings but brought to my attention about the obnoxious mental rigidity that was the very cause of my misery. He made me aware of my own folly by simply reflecting back my own shadows of perfectionism. For the first time in my life, I understood how it feels to be loved by a man who shares the same pulsation toward life. I wasn’t sure, though, whether that was the kind of love I was looking for. I hesitated for a while because my head said different things than my heart. I decided to follow my heart by accepting his hands despite the contradictions that my intellect was bickering about. I made a right choice on that.
However it was much, much later that I gradually came to understand what infinite divine love is, how to find and how it is coming from. No, it didn’t come from him, nor descend directly from heaven but through the very life I was living here and now, through the very people I love and interact every day. Most significantly when I started to accept, love myself and life as it is, only then could I really understand how love that which is our inborn nature can resonate from the bottom of my heart. Since then almost twenty years… I now can feel genuine love and affection toward others, especially when our eyes come across to meet, but I still can’t verbalize love that easily. Because love that is infinite is beyond what we can describe with words; it can only be lived. It takes time and self disciplines if we were to live and breathe love. Many were asking me why I have not written any stories since last posting months ago. I needed silence because suddenly there were flood of realization, of love and of life that I needed to contain the intense feelings before I could say anything at all. In all of our lives, how much the desire for love is at the heart of everything we do, everything we live for; and yet how further people have gotten away from it? I felt tremendous pain when I saw that. All our efforts in lives are nothing but paramount search for love that is infinite that can only be found from the sacred heart within. We need to turn around inside ourselves. The sacredness of love, the true reflection of our pure self has been spoilt and corrupted much as eroticism or narcissism only. How unfortunate…! In upcoming stories, I would like to share those infinite love stories in a hope to enrich your lives with happiness and freedom with the endless love that is within our reach all along…
