Love is what it is

Recently I have read a saying: “Loving is a feeling, while not loving is a fact. Fact can be explained easily, but feeling cannot.” Love is always being regarded as an irrational thing, with no reason, no caution, and no intelligence.

I have never been in love with someone, though I have read thousands of love stories and have watched hundreds of romantic movies. It’s said that love and death are the two eternal themes in literature, which elicit emotion and reaction. Because most people are afraid of death, love seems to be the most popular topic everywhere.

One of my favourite films, The Love of Siam, shows several kinds of love, including love within a family, love among friends, and of course love between lovers. This film used to be treated unusually, in that the main plot is describing the love of two boys, but I think it doesn’t matter at all. Since that love is irrational, there’s no need to take everything into consideration, like gender or family background, right?

What really touches me a lot is a conversation in this film, which occurs between these two boys, Mew and Tong. Both of their lives are kind of unfortunate: Mew is an orphan and his only relative, his grandmother, died when he is only twelve, so he lives alone from then on; Tong’s sister Tang gets lost in Chiengmai at the age of 15, and his parents cannot go out of the shadow losing a daughter. They have been neighbours for a short time in the childhood, and then they are separated by Tong’s moving house. The dialogue that touches my heart happens when they met each other again after several years. By the way, this is a Thai movie, and I watched it with Chinese subtitles, so I will try my best to translate it accurately.

At first, Tong asks Mew if he feels lonely living by himself. Mew answers in a low voice, “Of course. Be lonely to death.” He tells Tong the passing of his grandma and how this bad news affects his life. Then he pauses and adds, “Therefore I keep asking myself, if we love someone very very much, can we bear the pain of losing him? Separation may be a part of life, which both of you and I have experienced. Tong, do you think it is possible, that we love someone without any worry about losing him? Meanwhile, there is another voice asking me: is it possible, that we can live our own life without loving anyone? And this is loneliness.”

I was shocked by these words when I watched this film for the first time. I used to be confused that why people keep on falling in love with someone even if they would be or have been greatly hurt by love. I always think about this question until one day, my favourite writer, Bi Shumin, told me that our pain and sadness come from love, while our happiness and joy come from love, too. It is because we are all expecting to love and to be loved, that we keep living with so much tribulation.

In addition, Mew’s identity in the film is not only a student but also a singer, or to be more exact, a lead voice of a band called August. The beautiful songs performed by this band, I think, are another important reason that makes this film so charming. In the film, Mew writes down and sings out these songs to express his feelings, and one of the most significant lyrics is “Where there is love, there is hope.”

It is quite a pity that the Mew and Tong’s love doesn’t have a happy ending, with so much hindrance between. The last part of the film is that Tong tells Mew, “Maybe I cannot be your lover. But it doesn’t mean I don't love you.” Then they go back to their own homes, and the whole story ends in Mew’s silent tears.

Although it is a tragedy, I am still attracted by its lonesome beauty. Sadness is not equal to desperation, as long as we believe in that where there is love, there is hope. Hence, no matter love is irrational, or painful, or silly, we should never lose hope and always be brave to love.