第二十三章 爱就是相互依存

Track 23 Love is interdependence.

If somebody tells you: “I will love you forever.” Will you believe it?

I don’t think there is any reason not to. We are ready to believe such commitment at the moment, whatever change may happen afterwards. As for the belief in an everlasting love, that’s another thing.

Then you may be asked whether there is such a thing as an everlasting love. I will answer I believe in it. But an everlasting love is not immutable. You may unswervingly love or be loved by a person. Though love will change its composition with the passage of time, it will not remain the same. In the course of your growth, and as a result of your increased experience, love will become something different to you.

In the beginning, you believe a fervent love for a person could last indefinitely. By and by, however, fervent gave ways to prosaic. Precisely because of this change, it became possible for love to last. Then what was meant by an everlasting love when eventually end up in a sort of interdependence. We used to insist on the difference between love and liking. The former seemed much more beautiful than the latter. One day, however, it turns out there’s really no need to make such difference. Liking is actually a sort of love. By the same token, the everlasting interdependence is actually an everlasting love. I wish I could believe there was somebody who love me forever. That, as we all know, too romantic to be true. Instead, there will more often than none be a case of lasting relationship.