on love

In my outer life, I’m a risk taker and am not too concerned with security, because I believe that everything will work out through the fruits of my labor.

In my inner life, there’s nothing I cherish more than comfort and security, because I believe that in love, there’s only so much work you can do and the rest is up to having 缘分.

I guess that is a very Chinese thing for me to say. And perhaps even more to say that for the long term, you really need to be in a situation of 门当户对 (literally, “the door must match with the opposite party”). Shared background, shared experiences, comfort.

I think back to all of my failed relationships and I think this was lacking—I really liked the novelty of difference and the narrative of infatuation and didn’t care too much about what I viewed as boring, practical details. But now I know that it does matter—and that changes everything going forward.

Even a year ago, I would have treated a variety of scenarios that I’m faced with now differently. But now, I tread much more lightly, err on caution, conservatism. Before, I would have felt that calculation lacked genuity, but now I’m inclined to think that only through calculation and thought can you come to something stable and real.