We believe the world is real and regard everything as truly existing. In our search for happiness, we spend countless hours and work tirelessly. Yet when suffering strikes and impermanence reveals itself, when everything shifts and comes into being and passes away, we are still caught off guard, unwilling to let go. Answers sought from the outside are fragile and fleeting. Each person's life is a path leading back to the self. How should a person live? Most people rely on their own momentum: studying, falling in love, getting married, and having children. I have always doubted this fixed, predetermined path. To live according to one's own nature, one must go against the current and cultivate many precious qualities.
Incomplete within ourselves, we long for the perfect partner to appear and save us, skipping the challenges we need to overcome and trying to take a shortcut. Our consciousness splinters; we face loneliness and introspection. Rebuilding a strong inner core takes a great deal of effort. When our fantasies shatter and the other person leaves us, refusing to face reality, it becomes a love affair experienced by only one person.
Love cannot be sustained through emotional devotion alone, nor by pure and unreserved affection. The more passionate the love, the more it needs reason and wisdom to endure. Love can numb us to ourselves, making it hard to notice what the other person needs, longs for, and cares about. People are independent individuals, each with a unique past, life experiences, and inborn personality. Treating others as we would want to be treated merely fulfills our own romantic fantasies; it has nothing to do with them. How difficult it is to make a relationship work for two people.
