Heart's Commitment

When you fall in love with someone, don't focus on how long your time together will last, or calculate the gains and losses in this chapter of your journey. If the day comes when you truly have to say goodbye, then let yourselves wave farewell through misty eyes, offering mutual thanks. How wonderfully warm and comforting it is to look back and be grateful that your life paths once intertwined, that your memories bloomed with such vivid color. When you love someone, please treat them with ultimate gentleness. Even if fate inevitably forces you to choose the painful half of life, ensure your shared memories are flawless. At the very least, you once belonged to each other.

My acknowledged "capital" has always been my aloofness, but in her presence, it became utterly insignificant—it simply failed me.

The deep night is when the human spirit is most fragile, and when longing runs most wild. In truth, being alone isn't loneliness; true loneliness is feeling a deep yearning for another person. Sometimes, when she was happily chatting, I'd tell her I loved her. But I’ve also learned that even when feelings are mutually understood, love doesn’t always need a promise or to be spoken aloud. When it comes to her, I sometimes feel truly helpless. Seeing her as happy as a child, I couldn't bear to push, to let awkwardness flood the moment.

She told me I was very good to her. She said if she were to ever get married, I would be an excellent choice. But then, she told me, she doesn't plan on getting married.

I wanted to tell her my deepest intentions, yet that's the nature of love: once you agree to it, separation means pain and betrayal. I’d rather face the solitude alone, drowning myself in the hazy night or the dissipating smoke. In my trance, I lie still, listening to the soft murmur of her sleeping dreams, which shatter the illusion of my own. In the world of emotion, what is yours will eventually return to you; what isn't yours, why force it? I repeat this line to myself every night before sleep.

Sometimes I calmly reflect: Why does she like me? Is it real? An angelic woman, falling for a man as unremarkable as me? Is it my casual demeanor? Or the charming mystery of the distance between us? I can vouch for the sincerity of that feeling of infatuation, and I fully believe in the purity of that love. Yet, I always look for an excuse that isn't love. Because if it’s love, it means accepting all the joy and all the burden. If it’s true love, it means a lifetime of devotion. Ultimately, I reject all my suspicions and assumptions, because our mutual attachment doesn't allow me to color this love with too many thoughts. My lover is across the water, loving me. And I am on this side, loving my love.

If the necessary outcome of love is marriage, then I suppose I am destined to never have love in this life. I believe true love must have both a process and a result; otherwise, it is merely liking. A love that cannot progress to giving you marriage is not a complete love.

I remember chatting with a very mature friend once, and she spoke of her unfortunate relationship. The man she loved, her boyfriend of five years, retreated right before they were to be married and chose to move to the United States. When I asked why, I was stunned. She said, “He loved me, truly—I could feel it. But when it was time for us to get married, he said, ‘Darling, I love you, I can give you my heart, but I can’t give you marriage.’”

After hearing that seemingly sincere but helpless farewell, I silently cursed that man. In reality, that man was deeply calculating. By expressing his "helplessness," he gained a great deal of understanding from her. But I insist: a man who says such a thing is despicable. If you love someone, you can give her your heart, but not marriage? Then I believe it's not helplessness—it's an excuse. It is not enough love; it is a desecration of love. Your love for her simply wasn't strong enough to lead you to marriage. To love someone is to dare to commit and have the courage to follow through.

Perhaps someone will ask, "Aren't you contradicting yourself? Didn't you say love shouldn't care about duration?" Yes, don't worry about duration. Because when love sprouted in my heart, it was already destined to lead to marriage. I want to spend my lifetime protecting the person I love. If the journey is cut short, it won't be because of life's inevitabilities; it will only be the fragile end of my own life.

Waiting with hope is a kind of happiness. I don't know if I have hope, but I will wait indefinitely for things to ripen naturally. Love is, after all, the most precious feeling in life, and the person who offers it to you does so with the purest wishes and the most innocent hopes. I've grown accustomed to talking to the darkness, to sketching her image in the night. That is why I am happy.

Loving someone is not about whispering sweet, eternal vows. It is about the details of daily life, and it is a question answered over a lifetime.