Horizon

“I can say no more because she was she, and I was I.”

A beautiful line that I came across in a drama lately. In my opinion, it means loving someone needs no more reason than you love him/her. Love is a feeling. Feeling is something that comes from heart rather than from brain. It is not something which should be put on a balance and weigh its advantages and disadvantages. Neither should we measure the net gain like income minus expenditure. Though many a time we say that we reap what we sow, this may not always be true in the matter of love.

When we talk about love, most will think that romantic love is being discussed. I think Eastern values do not promote much of love among family members. The ancient Chinese values mostly stress on filial piety towards one’s parents, instead of loving them. Maybe it’s just the difference in words and language that the word “love” wasn’t applied. Continue on romantic love, it’s always related to relationships: the male-female type. Again, the cultural values imply that love leads to relationship and devoting one for another, and eventually lead to starting a family and etc.

This situation differs a great deal in the Western (mostly U S of A). Their teens treat love as a type of physical expression, and it’s most natural for everyone to make it to one another. I think it’s a good practice to spread love but not in a random and superficial manner. Somehow I think that we Asians should try to open up a little more to that kind of culture. I do not ask our teens to behave like the American does. But our youths should not think that love is restricted only to a single life partner. Open up yourselves to give and receive. Maybe then, you will be able to discover much more…

Have you ever got lost in your house? Never, most would say. What if you have a house so big that it has hundreds of rooms? Maybe you may not find your bedroom one day. This is an extract from a psychologist in a drama, giving an instance of a forgotten memory. Our brain is like a house with hundreds of rooms, he said. Some of our memories may be stored in our brain but we may not be able to find them.

Memories… They are the most important part of a person’s life. In Heroes, there’s one who can manipulate memories and make you forget things. And he threatened someone to tell his secrets or to lose his memories of his family members. And he succeeded. I’m not surprised; I would give up anything to retain my memories of my loved ones. That has somehow made me realized how memories become part of our lives; our memories of others and others’ memories of us, without which our existence wouldn’t have meant anything.

Does anyone remember his Standard One classmate who sat beside him? (Or better still, keep in touch with him?) I definitely can’t, no matter how hard I try. Maybe he wasn’t my good friend then. But then, I can hardly recall any friends whom I’ve befriended in Standard One. So, human is a forgetful being after all. (Or is it just me?)