Fate and Love
How closely related is Fate to finding Love? To those who view life with practicality, fate does not play a role in finding love, however to those hopeless romantics, love and fate goes hand in hand.
Fate is when someone passes your life regardless whether it is for a short or long period of time, whether they make an impression or not. Basically any chance encounter is fate. In short fate already plays the first step in getting to know your friends, enemies and life partner. The subsequent steps to be with your life partner could be fate as well as circumstances related.
In the Chinese mystical stories, there is a beautiful story of love and fate titled Butterfly Lovers. It is set in the Eastern Jin Dynasty between two scholars; Zhu Yingtai and Liang Shanbo.
Zhu Yintai is an attractive and intelligent young woman who manages to convince her father to allow her to attend classes disguises as a young man. During that era, women attending classes is unheard of. On her journey to Hangzhou, she befriended another scholar, Liang Shanbo. Unbeknown to Liang Shanbo that Zhu Yingtai is a woman, they gathered soil as incense and took a fraternity oath in the pavilion of a thatched bridge.
For the next three years as they study together, Zhu Yingtai began to develop feelings for Liang Shanbo. However Liang Shanbo failed to notice that Zhu Yingtai is a woman and continued treating her like his fraternity brother.
One day, Zhu Yingtai was requested home by her father. Over the three years, Zhu Yingtai has already developed such strong feelings for Liang Shanbo and has made a private vow in her heart to be with him for eternity. Prior to her departure, she reveals her true identity to the headmaster's wife and requests her to hand over a jade pendant to Liang as a betrothal gift.
As Liang Shanbo accompanied Zhu Yingtai off, she hinted about her identity by comparing their 'relationship' as a pair of mandarin ducks (symbolic of lovers in the Chinese culture). However, Liang Shanbo failed to get her hint. As a last resort, she decided to matchmake Liang Shanbo with her sister and they parted ways under the Changting pavilion where they made their fraternity oath.
Months later, Liang Shanbo kept to his promise and visited Zhu Yingtai to ask for her sister's hand in marriage. Upon arrival, he was surprised to see that his 'sworn brother' is actually a woman. He fell in love with her and they make a vow "till death do us part". However, before they could be joined in union, they discovered that Zhu Yingtai's family has already betrothed her to Ma Wencai, son of a rich family.
A heartbroken Liang Shanbo health deteriorates when he heard the news and later passed away.
On the day of the arranged marriage for Zhu Yingtai, a mysterious whirlwind prevented the wedding procession beyond Liang Shanbo's grave, which lies along the journey. A sad and depressed Zhu Yingtai left her wedding procession and ran to Liang Shanbo's grave begging the grave to open up. With a clap of thunder, the grave opened up and Zhu Yingtai threw herself in to join Liang Shanbo. It is believed that their spirits turn into a pair of beautiful butterflies and are never to be separated again.
This Chinese mystical story strongly indicates that once you are fated with a person, that person will be your soul mate/life partner for life. However, in reality, the person that you are fated with might not be the person you marry and the person who is your soul mate may also not necessarily be your life partner. Unlike a mystical story, love and fate sometimes do not go hand in hand till the end.
Love and Commitment
Many emphasized commitment as an essential part of a relationship. However to what extend could we commit ourselves in the name of love? The 6000 steps love story between two committed individual shows true commitment and love without boundaries.
The 6000 steps love story talks about Liu Gojiang and Xu Chaogin. Lu is only 19 years old when he fell in love with Xu who is 10 years his senior and a widower. Their relationship was not accepted by the society due to her widowed status and age gap (mentioned in my article The Rules Of Love). As a result of the gossips, both of them moved to live in a cave up the mountain by JiangQin Country. Life was harsh in the cave as they do not even have the basic necessity. Xu felt guilty but Liu is determined that as long as they love each other, they could survive any ordeal. Everyday, Liu will hand carve steps from the mountain to enable his wife to get up and down the mountain easily. After over 50 years together, Liu passed away in the cave and has crafted 6000 steps for his wife. According to their children, their parents lived in seclusion all these years and have never been apart at all. It is rumoured that on the day Liu passed away, he was still griping strongly to Xu's hands. His love for her was so strong that at death, he was still holding her hands. Xu was completely devastated and cried non-stop repeating "You promised me you'll take care of me, you'll always be with me until the day I die, now you left before me, how am I going to live without you?"
This is a touching story of true love, commitment and unconditional love. Are we able to really commit to someone to this extent in this modern era? Most of us seem to have subconsciously listed conditions in our love and commitment to each other. When the going gets tough or these conditions are not met or faced with a challenge, it is often we take the easy way out which is separation. The common reason is incompatibility though the actual reason is expectations not met.
We are often faced with many challenges in a relationship. They are tests to either strengthen our relationship but it could also be an indication of flaws that needs attending. All we could do is to give our best, try to be unconditional and accepting and if all fails, be brave to face the truth.
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