“Love is just a good memory. Successful and power people don’t make decisions based on emotion but on logic and determination. Are you the weak or the strong? Are you ordinary or extraordinary? Are you the person who has what it takes to be a leader among leaders? Or are you just one of those who live their life based on a daily emotion instead of on a long term and focused journey?”
- A recent text from my dad.
- A recent text from my dad.
For me, love is power; love is a success; love is only logical; love takes determination; love can be weak and love can be strong; love is extraordinary. Journey’s driven by emotion are the most tiring, up-and-down, wondrous and memorable trips you could embark on. Life is what you perceive it. My father, for example, understands life as a bank building, commercialistic race. Those on top of the ladder have the numbers to show for it. As bitter as I made that sound, it really just means he’s a hard working and determined man who wants to provide above and beyond his family’s expectations and needs. He wants to build a name for himself, suppress his childhood memories, and outshine it with his adulthood and business success. He has dreams he longs to achieve and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
To release a statement long over due, because of my childhood and life experiences, I believe money interferes with love. Not in all situations, but if you let it – it will. My father started a business the same year I was born and as I got older, it got more and more successful. However, as it got more and more successful, there was less and less of dad around. Sure, we went on expensive vacations – but Dad never forgot to upgrade his cell phone plan to international calling. He never put down his blackberry or laptop either. I love him for what he does for me, but I wish he’d see that I don’t need more money – I need him around. My dad has his business, in which he see’s takes care of his children, but what he doesn’t see is that sometimes we need his affectionate love, not his wallet. Financial security and wealth are his goals and what he bases success off of.
Be that as it may, those are his dreams, not mine. That is a borderline to my father and me. There’s this DMZ of vast misunderstanding and differences. Will we ever coincide in ideas and life perceptions? Will North and South Korea ever unite? Didn’t think so. But it is what it is, and despite it all he’s my father. I may not agree, but I love. And love is the inevitable, warming piece of relation that everyone can feel despite cultural or social class differences. That is why I choose love, above all.
Of course, I’m not going to run from society and become a naked love hippie, that’s not what I’m saying. I just want my dad to understand that I choose to live my life in happiness, not in wealth. I am going to pursue a career that I enjoy despite the income. I am going to marry the man who makes me happy; who loves, cares, and admires me for who I am, not because he’s rich. Our marriage isn’t going to be based on money, but on a spontaneous, crazy, hectic, unorganized, and joyful life together with our children. With careful budgeting and financial understanding, living pay-check by pay-check may be what I’m trading for. But I’m okay with that, because I will have the time to shower my children in the nurture and affection they need to be happy. Life isn’t perfect, and the route I chose won’t be easy. I do expect to feel stressed by money and to feel societal pressures to have the nicest things, but at the end of the day – it’s about finger painting with my toddlers and falling asleep next to my husband; and those are pure and simple acts of love.
Love is a word some people say too easily, too quickly, and too desperately. Perhaps some may argue the word’s meaning is lost. But I beg to differ. Love, like a great deal of things, comes in many different shapes and sizes. Love can vary from common courtesy to wedding vows. Love is infectious, passionate, rewarding, and so much more. Rewarding is probably my favorite way to describe love. When you do an act of kindness to a complete stranger, it is rewarding. When you can make the woman of your life glow in smiles, it is rewarding. When your child walks for the first time, it is rewarding. Love is guaranteed to reap what you sow, and nothing else in the world can give you that kind of promise. "Goodness is the only investment that never fails."- Henry David Thoreau. Business, money, and materials; they all come and go. But love is there, always.
Why I write about love is to not ramble on about my sinister feelings for my dad’s business or his life choices, but to remind myself of how lucky I am to be loved and to be able love others. The saying, ‘you don’t know what you got till it’s gone’ is absolutely true. It took my moving from Michigan to California for me to realize what this truly meant. It isn’t about where you are and what you do there, it’s about whom you’re with and the types of memories you make with them.
Therefore, I encourage you to take a moment to breathe. To calmly ask yourself just a few things that may, or may not, open your mind to new ideas and self-understanding. What do I value in life? What are my dreams and the reasoning’s for them? Where am I headed? The plans you make will never go as expected. What you plan may even backfire, but what’s life with out a little fire anyways? Live your life - don’t just exist in it. Live it out. Travel places you’ve always wondered about. Talk to the person you’ve been afraid to approach. Life is a risk; love is a risk; and love is life.
