Love is more than just an emotion
[Music]
[Applause]
many of us
see love just as an emotion we think of
love
as a deep affection for another person
but we forget
that it is also action that comes as a
result
of the emotion seeing love only as an
emotion
makes it very difficult to recognize
love from people
that say they love us or people they
don’t say it
but show it in different ways
one will appreciate that love comes in
the form of action
motivated by deep affection we can begin
to appreciate
the different ways that people love us
my asian culture is quite a restraint
and
implicit where i’m from love often
equals responsibilities
anything outside of this was considered
priorities
i was born in an ordinary family in
shanghai my father
is an engineer my mother is a teacher
and the family
has always been harmonians since i was a
little girl
however in my family apart from the
chinese new year
my birthday my brother’s birthday
we never celebrate anything else i never
ever remember the days
like my parents birthday anniversaries
or
valentine’s days because my parents
never saw love as a celebration
instead they saw love as a
responsibility
in middle school i started the process
called the view of my father’s back
by the famous chinese writer mr jutsu
ching
in this pose mr zhu writes about his
father
seeing him off the train station and
when they get there
his father first makes a fuss of
asking the attendants to take good care
of his son
during the journey his father then go
through the trouble of getting him
tangerines before he eventually leaves
the station as mr jew
watches his father’s back leaving the
station
tears right to his eyes
in that story the love that father can
give to his son
is the moment when he buys tangerines in
a hurry
while missed jules love is silently
looking back
with tears in his eyes
between them no words are said
they didn’t have to say it out loud
they loved each other
my parents traditional view about love
is a responsibility to give
they give us food shelter clothing and
all the good things
they give us their time and even give
themselves
to children’s families too
they’re like fire fighters because they
are usually the ones
putting out problems
the babysitter for their kids cook teach
and sometimes become the bank
that is how our parents told us
that they love us
now that i’m no longer a little girl
i find that i have also adopted
my parents style of expressing love
however i’ve taken it a little further
than just
one-sided responsibility
let me tell you about jessica
jessica is the daughter of a friend she
lived in my home for four months
while her visa issues were being sorted
out
at first i was very confused
about the right approach to being a
temporary parent
to a girl who was used to being spoiled
by
six adults her two parents
and four grandparents from her asian
background
the first and the obvious choice was to
give her
everything spoil her even and this
is similar to the love that my parents
showed me but i realized that
this responsibility to give was
one-sided
so i opted for the second and less
obvious choice this choice
was to give but also help her
become more mature by guiding her to
learn
some housework such as vacuuming
cleaning the bathroom cleaning the
bathroom
cooking noodles and so on
you see i knew that jessica had
never done anything like that before so
i wanted to teach her
a different way to be independent and to
care
for herself in the future
if i’m being honest this second choice
of showing jessica love
scared me a little because i was
afraid of how her parents would feel or
that she herself would feel that she was
being
treated unfairly fortunately
it all worked out well
because in those four months i started
seeing clean bathrooms and spotless
kitchen counters
i showed jessica love beyond just
the responsibility to give her the
things she needed
i taught and guided her
jessica intern showed me love by
being more responsible with our shared
space
now we have gained the trust and respect
for each other
in turn she makes me amazing homemade
sweet desserts and gives really good
hugs
the differences in the ways that we
express love
doesn’t just cut across different
cultures
it cuts across generations this year
when the coffee 19 broke out the whole
family
stayed together on 14th
of february valentine’s day
my son john told us that he had ordered
dinner downtown for a special evening
he had booked it two weeks ago and
hoped that his mom and dad could have
the experience of
romantic holiday
that happened to be our first romantic
candlelight dinner for valentine’s day
ever
my husband and i typically do not
celebrate much
and apart from birthdays other festivals
are not
paid special attention to in our family
he believes that we do not live on
anniversaries or
festivals he believes
that when we need to be happy we do not
have to wait for
festivals we can celebrate any time
but to my son john equals celebration
of even the smallest things
this is his generation’s way of showing
love to parents
and even themselves
although it’s different from how either
i or my husband express love
or are used to receiving love
we recognized his gesture for what it
was and that is an action motivated by
his deep
affection for us and that
is love
so we choose to respect and enjoy it
anyway
observing and appreciating the different
ways
that people express love has been very
exciting for me
but something i find even more exciting
than
that is the different ways that people
identify love
believe me it’s different
when i was seven years old my father
took me to his workplace
in another city for a week i already
knew
a bit about my father’s job and how
large
his factory was but that was the first
time
that i ever left home to see the
real world i got to attend the company’s
big new year
celebration we boarded a huge ship
and i got eat a lot of seafood
i can still remember every detail of
what i
saw what i smelled
and how curious i was
even though it was 45 years ago
from my perspective even as a little
girl
that was love
my parents giving me experiences that i
would
never forget and showing me the word
was more important than giving me a back
as i’ve grown older i’ve continued
to observe the different ways that we
show and
receive love i’ve seen the difference
between the way my generation shows love
and the way
my son’s generation shows love
it’s all very beautiful and incredibly
fascinating
in romantic relationships there’s a term
for this
and it’s called love language
love experts believe that there are
certain actions
and behaviors that a person would only
show
if they love you and that they would
interpret
as love if their partner exhibited these
behaviors
these behaviors could be as little as a
good morning text
or as flashy as a new product boots
i think that this concept in a much
broader sense can be applied beyond
romance
to non-romantic relationships not only
should we express
love in our own personalized way
but we should also be patient with
others and try to understand and
appreciate the language of
love that they speak and
understand
love is love and different people give
and receive love in different
ways whatever it looks like
as long as not harmful
you and i can still receive and
appreciate
whatever it looks like from
whomever it is please
give accept respect
trust and enjoy love
my husband has promised that for next
year’s valentine’s day
he would be inviting me to a fancy place
for dinner
it’s a new expression of love for us and
we
are both very excited about that