The Moment I Fully Understood Love
Dear Friend,
It’s Valentine’s Day! I want to share a New Year article I wrote two years ago, in the depth of the pandemic. Looking back, it's one of my favorite pieces. I have watched hundreds of romantic comedies in my life, and read just as many books about love. I have been married for over a decade. But this was the moment when I truly understood what love is.
Hint: it has nothing to do with my feelings or emotions.
Enjoy!
I was first introduced to Lee Greenwood’s song, God Bless the USA by my uber patriotic college roommate as a way to indoctrinate me to America. And it worked. I love this song! It gets me the chills about the country I love every time I hear it. That said, I do have one pet peeve with the beginning. It goes like this:
If tomorrow all the things were gone
I worked for all my life
And I had to start again
With just my children and my wife
I thank my lucky stars
To be living here today
'Cause the flag still stands for freedom
And they can't take that away
…
Sure, it sounds fantastic and patriotic, but honestly, it also feels like a platitude to me. Greenwood still has his children and wife. As long as you are surrounded by those who matter the most to you, of course you dust yourself off and start over. Don’t most people, if not everyone, feels this way?
A much darker question has always lingered in my mind: what if you indeed lose the most precious people in life? What would happen then? This thought is so unsettling, my pain avoidance mechanism has always kicked in to prevent me from going deeper. [Spoiler alert for the movie Notebooks, Tracy’s favorite] In our minds, Tracy and I will start our journeys in the next life like Allie and Noah, together, in bed, holding hands. [/spoiler].
But yesterday, the dark thought of not having one of us almost became a reality we were forced to face, instead of a thought exercise we were trying to avoid.
For the past couple of months, we have picked up this weird hobby of crabbing. It goes like this: you go to the beach, use a fishing pole to throw in a squid filled snare into the ocean as far as you can. You wait for 10-15 minutes for the Dungeness crabs to feast on it, then reel it in, hoping the snare would catch one of the many crab legs, and then you have a catch. If you want to increase your catch rate, you wear a wader suit, which helps you to walk farther into the water before casting your snare, all while staying warm and dry. It’s super fun!
Everything was indeed fun. Until this past Sunday.
When Tracy and I first arrived at the beach, everything looked so strange. The first thing we noticed was that there was hardly anyone there. Usually, a beach is filled with fellow crabbers. Great! More space for us! So we thought, The second thing was that the water was very low. The lowering tide revealed a huge swath of land previously covered by water. “Wow aren’t we lucky today!” I said to Tracy. The added land would give me even more walking space to cast the snare even farther.
Without wasting more time, the fishing started. Tracy filled the snare with squid, and my job was to cast it into the ocean. I started walking in. The farther I went, the stranger it got. Because the water has receded so much, it was all dry land! I was walking in places where water was usually waist-deep. That eerie feeling that something isn’t right started to kick in. Should I keep going, taking advantage of the distance? Or should I cast it now? I turned around and saw Tracy, who was setting up chairs at the beach. But what shocked me was how distant she and the backdrop seemed. I’ve never been this far away from the shore.
Then I turned around and looked ahead. Something on the horizon was approaching: a small waist-high wave. Small waves like this are nothing unusual. They come and go all the time. As long as you stand firm, they would simply go past you, and the wader would keep you dry. But when this wave got to me, something felt very unusually: it was too fast and powerful, almost knocking me backward. This is not good, I immediately thought to myself. I’m too deep and I need to back up.
As I backtracked a few steps, a second and larger wave got to me. This time the water was so fast that I had to temporarily leave my feet for a small jump, so my body would flow backward a few yards before landing again, and I don’t lose my balance and get wet.
As soon as I landed, the third wave appeared. This time, it was higher than my head, and moving as fast as any water I’ve come in contact with. In that moment, I suddenly felt I was in this scene in the movie Interstellar, quoting Matthew McConaughey: "Those aren't mountains... they're are waves." My mind immediately switched from staying dry to staying alive. If not careful, I could easily lose balance and get washed away. This could get bad.
It wasn't Interstellar, but felt like it
The third wave hit me like a train, and I immediately lost my balance and fell. Sea water poured into my wader like a vase submerged in a bathtub. My weight felt doubled. Thanks to my instinct, and probably Divine Blessing, I turned my body around to face the shore. As soon as I lost my balance, the water pushed me forward instead of backward, and I quickly got down on my four to regain control of my body. Had I tried to stay upright facing the ocean, I would have floated like a log.
With both my hands and legs, I tried to push myself up and walk again. But that’s when the water from the first wave started to fall back from the shore and push against me. Not only I couldn’t stand up easily with the heavy and filled wader suit, the receding water was threatening to wash me back into the ocean.
That’s when the fourth wave came. This time, instead of it being the scythe of the grim reaper, it felt like the hand of an angel. The powerful wave collided with the receding water and pushed me toward the shore, and I floated for a good 5 yards before touching the ground with my hands and knees. With the momentum, I stood up and ran back like closing out a Sumo Run contest.
As I came to safety and snapped out of survival mode, I immediately looked for Tracy to make eye contact to assure her I was OK. Yes I was embarrassed and wet, but I still wanted to appear manly and in control! But when I saw her, she was not only not there standing and greeting me, but also on her hands and knees and crawling back to the shore the same way I was. As it turned out, as soon as she saw me struggling in the water, she ran into the water trying to save me. But very quickly, the powerful wave that knocked me down few seconds earlier got her as well. The only difference was that she was about 30 yards behind me, and the wave had lost much of its power when it got to her. Had she been 10 more yards farther, the scene could have been her being washed away, with me chasing after her back into the ocean.
When we both managed back to the beach, we looked like two retrievers coming out of the river, without the ability to shake ourselves dry (that’s one thing I admire about dogs. I wish I could do a shake straight from shower to bed, without having to towel). At that moment, I wanted to do what Jack did after Rose jumped back into the Titanic from her rescue boat because she wanted to be with him, kissing Tracy frantically while yelling “you are so stupid, Tracy!” But I was too wet, tired and cold. As it turned out, energetic romantic actions require both energy and emotions.
Tracy did her own version of jumping off the lifeboat
Driving back home in the familiar, comfortable and heated car seats, we talked, talked, and talked more. We discussed about how terrifying nature can be: it doesn’t care about you, it doesn’t prepare you, it just does what it does, regardless if you are there or not; We talked about lessons learned (Don’t take unnecessary risks; Pay attention to the warning signs, such as no other people, low tide and unfamiliar situation). We also thanked God profusely. Either or both of us could have been lost. But because of our faith, it felt like our lives were much more ‘saved’ than ‘almost lost’.
But lastly, kept asking each other: should Tracy have gone in after me? If I, at 200 lbs. and more or less athletically built, were to succumb to the wave, how could she have managed to save me or survive herself? And in the case I made it to shore but she was washed away, I would for sure have gone back in after her, and we both might be lost. What should she have done instead? Calling out strangers for help? Saving herself to raise our kids, all while living with the guilt?
In the end, we had no answer, because deep down, we know no matter how much we rationally discuss this matter, if it were to happen again, there is no way one of us wouldn’t have forgotten all the danger in the world and gone in trying to save the other.
This is instinct. This is love. You just do it. There is no rationale here.
This morning, we read this news article, learning that yesterday was indeed not an aberration. A few people lost their lives because of the unusually high waves. We were very fortunate that our names weren’t included on the list.
Now, let’s fast forward to Valentine’s Day, 2023. Maybe you have already found the love of your life, perhaps you are still searching, or maybe you are trying to rekindle what was once there. But please know, the real measurement of love is not strong emotions or romantic words. It’s what you do for each other, especially in moments of need and sacrifice.
So for those who truly matter in your life, whether it’s your significant other, family, or friends, hug them, praise them, and cherish every minute with them. But more importantly, do something meaningful for them as an act of love. You never know when and where a tidal wave can come. And when it does, there is nothing guaranteed.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Jia Jiang