괜찮아요

Over the weekend, I’ve witnessed how love has impacted lives. When I say ‘love’, it’s referring to love in general.

“Love is when you take into consideration the people around you when you’re making your decision.”

There is this youth whom I’ve not seen for quite a long while, in fact, the only time I remembered seeing him was the first time we met some one to two years back. We were chatting and he asked me a few questions about studying in Singapore and such [yep, he's an Indonesian] because he was comtemplating to come to SG to study. When I saw him again over the weekend, I did not instantly recognized him, it was through our conversation when it brought back the past memories. He is really hardworking and always striving for his goals. It’s really admirable. He loves his family, just as they love him, but because of some issues, he is quite uncertain about how he should face the problems without hurting his family with his decisions.

“Love is when you come to love someone imperfect perfectly.”

Cliche as it may sound, it’s how things are. How perfect are we anyway? Man ain’t Saints, don’t we always say ‘To err is human’? When we are able to pin-point to an issue just on the basis of the issue itself, we are fair [well, if you will --- unbias]. Sometimes, we fail to separate personal feelings and issues, which is not uncommon, and we tend to make decisions which we’ll come to regret later. Like parental love, it’s able to accept all flaws that we have as children; our parents do not abandon us because of a mistake [okay, unless it's really grave like disowning your own family or ancestors or something :p], instead, they will console us and give us second chances [note the plural form]. Although this love may not have worked miracle always, it’s really a factor to influence why at times we avoid committing another mistake or making another wrong decision.

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” – Jimi Hendrix

Just now I was revising history [subject] with one of my tutees who will be having his exams [though my only memory about the subject was during my Sec. 1 and 2 days; so actually I know nothing related to what he was studying for this subject] and it was on WWI, WWII, the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles [thank goodness for the IO and NGO class I did on exchange which taught me about United Nations and touched on such issues too], I realized that love can work both ways, leading to war. A patriotic person who loves your country, wanting the best for your country, this may lead to war; when you love peace but yet unable to stop it due to conflicting interests, you have to give up your love for the greater love of your countrymen (maybe because you think they are right). When we look back, we see how regimes have rose and fell because of power; Man is always yearning for power but we are not ’skilled’ enough to handle it (remember the famous quote from Spiderman — “With greater power comes greater responsibility”?).

“Where there is love there is life.” – Mohandas K. Gandhi

Love for the animals; love for the plants; love for your neighbours; love for your friends; love for your peers; love for your family; etc. Wherever love exists, there is life. Truly.

What is love? Well, I suppose love is what we make out of it. If we are able to live with love every moment, maybe the world will be a better place to live in?