I want to wish you a very happy Valentine's Day and share some personal perspectives on the different ways love shows up in life and what I've learned about love.
How we come to know love evolves from our relationships, from the time we are born to the time we die. Along the way, we come to love the most difficult person of all. Whether we have mastered true, unconditional love depends on whether we are able to pass this litmus test of love.
What is the litmus test of love? Read on to find out! Enjoy and have a lovely week!
The Many Faces and Phases of Love
Personal stories about love on Valentine’s Day
The first time I fell in love, it was with my grandmother, who raised me when I was born until I was one year old. My parents had to work and couldn’t afford daycare. In 1963, transportation in Taipei to my grandmother’s house was difficult, so my parents generally visited on weekends. That’s how my grandmother got first dibs on my little beating heart. I learned from loving her that wrinkles and gray hair had nothing and everything to do with love.
I loved the way she loved me: colored paper to cut into snowflakes, red-bean popsicles, and sugar cane after work for all to share. She was the best cook ever. The day I immigrated to America, I refused to get on the plane and made a dash for her as everyone lined up for boarding--a seven-year-old's attempt to remain with her grandmother. I failed.
When I arrived in America, I fell in love with all the boys in my first-grade class because they looked different from the kids in Taiwan. I learned that love found differences beautiful and enchanting. What a blast I had chasing boys and being chased by them during recess! In second grade, Ricky, who had bright, carroty hair, was my brother’s best friend. I think he liked me because he loved to tease me and nicknamed me “Flea-bag.” A term of endearment if there ever was one. When I was a high school junior, I happened to be at his school for a play. In an auditorium filled with hundreds of students, he recognized me and came over to chat. I hadn't seen or talked to him for nine years! Never underestimate the depth and devotion of someone who calls you Flea-bag.
Through middle school and all through high school, it was one crush after another. But the Romeo-and-Juliet of all of my crushes was with David. He loved punk rock and read Kafka. His ice-blue eyes held enough cynicism to outweigh the entire Mormon, happy-valley vibe at Bountiful High School. Though we were very different from each other, we loved to banter back and forth about life. My father, however, didn't like him and got between us (literally). Time passed. We both got old, and I contacted him nearly 40 years later. That's how much he meant to me. It was healing for me to return and resolve my relationship with David. What I learned from that whole mess was that love doesn't care if it's right or wrong, good or bad--it just is.
Then there was love during college with Steve, whom I dated for two years. He wanted me to marry him, be a housewife, and have twelve kids. Obviously, he missed the whole point of me being pre-med. After that was love in medical school which led to marriage. Twenty years later, however, it ended in divorce, so let's just skip over that. What I learned from all of that is that love doesn't like to be stuck in a box just because it should, or stay because it must. Love is a free spirit and only stays for love.
The best thing from marriage was learning about mother-love and what it felt to love and be loved by my children. Being a mother was to experience constant entertainment and a lot of undeserved pride from being associated with two amazing kids. Mother-love opened my heart to love in spite of my imperfections and taught me that perfection is perceived through perfect love.
As a psychiatrist, I found it easy to love my patients. Now, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t romantic, just filled with warm regard and unconditional acceptance. I learned that when I came to know someone deeply, it’s possible to love the person for who they are, not what they do. I loved a patient who later killed his father with an ax. I loved patients who abused others--children and women. I loved little patients whose ADHD were so bad that their own mothers wanted to give them away to foster care. I learned from my work that love sees who you are. And who you are will always be worthy of love.
For me, however, the litmus test for true, unconditional love involved an individual that I found nearly impossible to love. Knowing her did not help me to love her, the way knowing my patients helped me to love them. Our relationship was the kind I found easy to ignore and place last on my priority list. Nothing she did seemed good enough. When she received a compliment, I could hardly believe it because I only saw her faults rather than her gifts.
Over the years, however, by some miracle, I slowly came to accept and love her more. In fact, just the other day I cried over all the times I had failed to honor the dreamer in her and vowed to do better. This Valentine’s Day, I want to acknowledge and celebrate this relationship. She deserves it. Unfortunately, it’ll be hard to surprise her, since this person is me.
No one knows how best to live and love your life the way it truly wants to be lived and loved than yourself. Our relationship with ourselves is the testing ground for choosing love when no one will witness it but ourselves. Love with all your heart this Valentine’s Day and remember to also celebrate and love yourself.