Trust in Love
Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. — Robert A. Heinlein
Love defies borders and boundaries. No wall can hold back real love. Love strengthens the spirit and soothes the soul. Look up the definition of love, and you’ll find there are a myriad of definitions — intense feeling of deep affection; great interest or pleasure in something; affection, attraction, attachment, cherish, devotion, passion… Context determines the definition. Infinite variations of emotions swirl together to form a kaleidoscope portrait of our loves — those we cherish beyond life. Physical distance can be overcome by boundless love connecting us across time and space. With love in our hearts, we are never alone.
Love fastens us to the Universe. Today, I am physically alone, but my heart is with all those I love. Through my window I see the loving rain wash trembling leaves protected by a bulwark of mighty pines. A flurry of wings shoots through the moss covered branches. The soggy dark ground absorbs water in anticipation of spring’s inevitable rebirth. I send my love through the scene like a sunbeam across the sea and sky hoping to lighten the day of my loves. We are together in this world, and that sweet blessing is enough for today.
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. — William Shakespeare Trust and love are joyful twins. Trust is the foundation of love. No matter what storms may arise in your relationship, trust will guide you through the darkness. No relationship endures unless there is trust. Respect one another. Speak truthfully. There can be no “us” without trust. My wife and I found one another after suffering through terrible first marriages. Sixteen years ago, about this time of year, was a period of great misery for me. I had been alone for over a dozen years. As a single parent, raising my three kids took everything I had to give. There was no room for another person in my life. But overwhelmingly dire circumstances led me to seek someone to simply talk to. This is when the divine Universe first guided me and pushed me to write to a dozen women, all near my age, divorced with a child. I wanted to chat with someone who had some common frames of reference.
On January 1, 2005 I received the most important email of my life — a reply from Happy Hong. One of the first sentences she ever wrote to me was, “…I agree that honesty is very important…” We built our relationship on honesty and trust. We chatted through the old Microsoft Messenger. My dear wife is the best English teacher I have ever known. She can explain complex points of grammar in three languages. But she made one wonderful grammar mistake when we were first getting to know each other. It was a simple error, she had closed an email to me with Love, not sincerely, not yours… LOVE. I asked her years later about that, and she did not mean to imply actual love, she had been taught it was just a different way to end a letter. That was the second time the divine Universe shoved me in the right direction. Seeing that word sparked my heart back to life.
After a year of video chatting, we agree to meet. TRUST was the core of our first meeting. It was Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) and the enormous airport was terribly crowded. I scanned the huge crowd for her face — there a hundred feet away were the two most beautiful eyes I had ever seen — looking at me in person for the first time. She playfully tried to hide, and I was forever smitten. My wife is from Guangxi in tropical southern China. During our first time together, she resurrected my battered soul. One day, we rode a bicycle built for two out to the world famous Moon Hill in Yangshuo. While walking up over 800 steps, a lady kept trailing us asking us to buy bottles of water. Finally I asked her, how many bottles do I need to buy so you will leave us alone? Four bottles of water later, I asked Happy Hong to marry me beneath that gigantic stone arch. I chased her around the world several times, moved to China for years before five years later, we finally got married. But each step on that journey has been taken with LOVE and TRUST. Express yourself to those you love — today. You can’t go wrong if you — Trust in Love.
