Very early in the morning while it was still dark, I woke up and started to write about this passage. Once in a while, I saw a very good message from Vivian Chow, a 90s Canton Pop singer. In her Facebook, she wrote: “This is the Chinese “love” character in traditional, when it turns 90 degree clockwise, it becomes a letter of “god”. It means “God is love”.
It definitely is a very good message and makes me decide to write something about “love”.
There is a controversial debate recently about the use of Chinese characters in China. Famous film director Feng Xiaogang suggests to use back traditional Chinese character instead of simplified one. He points out an example that the word “my dear” in Chinese is a combination of two characters “close” and “love”. It literally means to see my dear in person and love my dear in heart. However, the character lost its meaning once simplified. Chinese characters originate with a meaningful idea. It is a pictograph, which represents the meaning from writing and graphic. Herein, I would not like to go in depth a discussion about it. Whereas, what we all agree is that love begins in our heart and furnish inside out.
Furthermore, let take a step forward. In order to have love, one should stand from the others’ perspectives and give of your best in faith and without fear.
The movie “Alice in Wonderland” tells us an adventure about courage and faith. One day, Alice fell into a rabbit hole after pursued a White Rabbit. She passed a long way to a curious hall with many locked doors of all sizes. She found a small key to a door too small for her to fit through, but through it she saw an attractive garden. She then discovered a bottle on a table labelled "DRINK ME", the contents of which cause her to shrink too small to reach the key, which she had left on the table. While she was being frustrated, she saw and ate a cake with "EAT ME" written on it in currants. However, it made her enlarge too big to reach the ceiling.
She flustered with full of confusion while facing unknown and challenge even she got remedies on hand. Life is a fantastic journey. Throughout her adventure, she needs companions; she needs supporters; she needs an affirmation of her confidence; but the greatest of these is love.
It was told from the movie that how she was not willing to be, how passive she was, she did not even believe she was “the right Alice. She denied as it was a mistake. However, the White Rabbit said to her, "it is you." Meanwhile, a group of friends helped her to escape from the enemies. Her friend Mad Hatter helped her avoid capture by allowing himself to be seized instead. He said to her: “as long as you believe”.
"Don't be afraid, just believe”, I’m afraid it should be the most confused belief in our life. Most of the time, I think we would blame the God for his injustice and scold “why me?”
The movie after all it was a happy ending that Alice overcame her fear and got rid of her “comfort zone” to pick up the sword and won the battle. Yet, in reality, we have to be trusted to receive love. It is an illusive feeling that it has to to take action to experience.
If the verse “God is love” is right, then logically, what he should have us a purpose for taking physically and practically action to gain this love, instead of being a cogitated thought. It is what action means. In order to achieve this, we need the affirmation from White Rabbit; we need accompany support from Mad Hatter, so on and so on. Hence, what we live in a society with friends, family support, but not alone.
Alice expresses her confidence with action, picks up the sword; doctors and nurses with action, heal the patient with love and care; teachers with action, cultivate students with trust in their growth; parents with action, love their children, care their... Their expression is gratuitous with a sense of responsibility and heartily taken. No matter how the role is, this action is being mutually trusted.
If this is an action, it should develop further to sustain. It is meaningless to stay without progress. However, I would like to close here and continue a further discussion in the next passage.
(Samuel Yang contributed this aritcle to CCD. Original title: The Heart of the Jouney.)
