Untapped Potential of Humanity

    It has been quite difficult these days, psychologically, being surrounded by uncertainties around both globally and also domestically.  However, seeing this news that these two female scientists and also another female scientist win the Nobel Prize suddenly makes me joyful. I was thinking why it makes me happy just because they are women? This news is actually nothing to do with me because the only common thing between them and me is just that we are the same gender. 

    I don't think much about gender inequality or discrimination for a long time  – in fact, I intentionally forced myself to not give too much attention to it. I often feel that by thinking much about it is making me feel more powerless and also reinforcing the problem further. The other thing is also because in our society, there are much harsher discrimination than gender discrimination  – discrimination against the poor, ethnic minorities, and those from different religions is much more problematic. 

    However, this time, I tried to dig a little deeper why this news makes me happy, and more precisely, makes me feel empowered. I realized that regardless of advanced degrees I hold and professional achievements I have, I still have this big fear of not knowing enough. Even though I studied in a liberal arts college in the U.S. and lived in New York for several years, I still do not feel normal to work in a profession largely dominated by men, and also to find myself in most meetings and panels as an only woman or another woman. Sometimes, I even think that I was invited to balance the gender composition. So why am I still afraid? Would a man with equivalent education and experience feel the same? I certainly doubt so. 

    While I also completely support the traditional norms where women happily and freely choosing to be full-time mothers and housewives, the sad reality is that we still live in a world in which for women to come this far professionally is an exception, rather than the norm. My brother would be reading news about male scientists winning the Nobel or any other worldwide achievements and still feel nothing about it because it is normal. 

    To give perspective, what I have experienced is only a very slight hint of gender discrimination.  If the slightest amount of discrimination still could make someone like me feel less empowered, I cannot imagine for those who experience systemic discrimination across our society, due to their biological or social differences. Discrimination harms our society in many ways - it essentially hinders our progress in a society since those being discriminated are not only feeling less empowered, but also being denied opportunities that could otherwise be available to them.

    Imagine a society and a world where there is no discrimination of any kind. Imagine how much we can achieve and progress as humanity as a whole? 

New Hiking Adventure up in the Jiankou Great Wall

"Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you." -David McCullough

This past weekend, I had a great opportunity to join a group of amazing people from Schwarzman Scholars Program on their overnight trip to hiking up the Jiankou Great Wall, one of the most dangerous and wild yet the most beautiful Great Wall sections. I am writing to document a great memory in words -- to feel this thrill, joy and contentment again in the future. It was an incredible adventure filled with sunshines, good laughs, meaningful conversations, kindness of people, comforting camp food, some stars, the beautiful full moon and boom fire -- and all the sweats, hard work and positivities to get through a very challenging path of the Great Wall. I could not have asked for more.

Before the trip:

Even though Myanmar is a very beautiful place, due to a lack of proper infrastructures and conflicts in some places, sadly, we do not have much access to many of its beautiful places where we can go hiking or trekking. So I have not been hiking for quite a while. When I heard a friend talking about hiking to the Great Wall, I did not even think much and asked him if I could join. Thankfully, these people didn't mind me tagging along.

The group had a few meetings before the trip --  informing about the trail, what to expect and what you need to bring for the trip etc. I was warned that it would be quite brutal. However, as an adrenaline junkie as I am, my hunger for this new adventure far more exceeded my aversion towards pain. Life would be quite boring if we live in our comfort zones all the time - you will never find out what you are capable of unless you keep pushing yourself a little more every now and then.

We went shopping for gears and food a day before the trip. The preparation was so thorough that I knew it would be an amazing trip. I packed going through the checklist and I cautiously packed some light extra layers in case it got cold up there. (Recently, in April, I went up to the Mount Sinai in Egypt, no one told us how cold it would be up there during the night. We took the camel ride up there at 2am to catch the sunrise at 5:30am. The cold was brutal and it was difficult to enjoy the beautiful sunrise over the mountain ranges up on the top.)

During the trip:

Saturday:

On Saturday morning before 8am, I met up with the group at the Dongzhimen Bus Hub. From there we took a bus to the outskirt of Beijing that is close to the trail head we wanted to go. After we got off, we took a taxi that would drop us off at the trail head. 

Group picture right before starting the hike

Around noon, from there we started our journey.  Half hour into the hike, I started realizing that I never carried this much heavy backpack before because in the past hiking trips, we usually have some access to water or we bring the water purifier with us. I started doubting if I could make it with this heavy pack. But, also the first half hour of the hiking is always the most difficult one physically because your body starts adjusting the sudden change in exerted pressure and additional use of muscle strengths you don't need in normal days sitting and walking. 

Not before an hour into the hike, we faced our first adversary - the steep rocky wall! Following the careful instructions, we beat our first opponent :) 

As we hiked along, we started seeing the breathtaking scenes of mountain ranges and the wall along, and forgot all the struggles and felt rejuvenated again. It was all worth it. The one thing I wished I did was to have learned a bit of historical context about the Wall before going on the trip. That would make it more mentally stimulating.

The combination of the heavy backpacks and the difficulty level of the trail slowed us down a bit - at least it was the case for me. Later, one of the trip leads helped me repack my backpack to have better weight redistribution (Thanks a lot Eva!). It was much better to walk after that! 

Half of the hike was climbing rough and steep slopes of the Wall. There was a time I felt that "just one mis-step or a slip, I could die." A mix of fear and amazement on taking the risk was exhilarating -- at the face of the risk of death, I felt fully alive!

So we took longer than we planned to reach the destination to camp for the night but we managed to find a good watchtower. It was so awesome to have camped inside the abandoned ancient watchtower! But, I can only imagine that it was not so awesome for those ancient soldiers who slept on the watchtower...

We were able to catch a breathtakingly beautiful sunset over the range of mountains and the Wall. 

After the strenuous hiking half the day, we were all starving. We started preparing some basic comfort food (I suppose we were so hungry and busy eating that we didn't take any pictures of our dinner :)) Everything tasted so delicious - gummy bears, PB&J with tortillas, Chinese preserved meats, cheese, popcorns etc. 

After dinner we hanged out on the top of the watchtower, chilling and listening to a playlist of lovely country music (which took me back to good memories of my college years in Colorado.) I was hoping to see stars up the sky but it was a day after the full moon so we instead saw a beautiful (nearly) full moon! It was cloudy a bit earlier but it brightened up as the night went by and a few stars came out too. 

Sunday: 

We decided to wake up early to catch the sunrise. In the morning, this was the scene I woke up to! The moon was still up there at 5:30am.

the breakfast to fuel for the rest of the hike for the day

After breakfast, we headed out to finish the hike. We later split into two groups - one decided to make a full loop and the other to take a shortcut back. For us who took the shortcut passed through the touristy part of the Great Wall. After being in the Wild for a day, it was a bit shocking to see so many tourists with all kinds of fashions to make great photos with the Wall. By that time, I was already quite beaten up.

And for the last part, we took the slides to go down! That was quite fun. We then met up with the other group who made the loop and had lunch and headed back to our campuses.

It was the most physically and mentally challenging hiking trip I had ever done, making me feel so accomplished. Every time we took a look back, we were amazed by how far we had come! Each and every step counts, so does every moment filled by the beauty of the nature and the wonderful spirit of the people who treasure it. 

Remembering the Past In Honor of Unknown Heroes

Photos from the 1988 Uprising

Remembering and honoring those unknown heroes with unshakable faith in truth, justice and freedom...

Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the Pro-democracy Uprising in 1988 in Myanmar, which gives us this opportunity to re-engage with our past 30 years ago in order to better understand our present-day concerns and challenges, and to imagine a better future for all of us here in this country.

So I would like to take this moment to revisit the past. While there are political figures and names everyone knows and stories of all kinds about the 1988 and subsequent political struggles in our country, lacking technology combined with oppressive rule of the BSPP means that the mass nationwide movement like that could not have happened without all those people who took part and without unnamed heroes who persisted risking everything they had.

This reminded me that three years ago, I had this opportunity to help a friend who was writing a book on stories of Myanmar women - one of them she chose to write about a former political prisoner, Noble Aye. Since my friend, the writer, does not speak Burmese, I helped interpreting the interview with Ma Noble. She is in her early 40s and had been imprisoned twice for a total of over 11 years - which means that she spent a quarter of her life in prison.

She said, "Being in prison is like living a life along someone else who decides how I live. If they want to frighten us (with the imprisonment and tortures), it does not work. By putting us in prison, they destroyed our lives, our families and our future. If l look at my family, I see only broken relations, anger, sadness, poverty that was very close to begging for survival. However, my political beliefs did not change and will not change, they can never be destroyed."

Those three hours conversation/interview with Ma Noble about her life shattered me a little and also shed some light on a few questions I had about the past. I learned about her life - her involvement in the 1996 and 1998 students demonstrations and 2007 protests; how she was always followed by the military intelligence (MI); how she was arrested, and interrogated; and her life in prison.  There were moments she was shaking and her eyes were filled with tears while telling her story. I was also quite overwhelmed with tears while listening to her story.

What is really inspiring is that even though her life, her future, her family had been destroyed, there was no trace of regret in her and she still firmly believed that we should never be treated that way, we should never be imprisoned for our belief or for doing what we believe is right or exposing the truth. Her first imprisonment was due to her involvement in distributing a book about the 1996 students' demonstration, and the second was due to her participation in 2007 protests.

In her own words, "The distribution of the book was a way of telling the truth, of informing the people, of making students' testimonies collected in asylum known to the people in Myanmar."

For me personally, I was a small kid in 1988 to understand what it was all about. Yet, there are a couple of things stuck in my mind - the sound of shooting guns on the street in front of our house and the scene that a big group of unarmed young people was followed by military tanks were both very terrifying and unsettling for a small kid. For others, their brother or sister went missing; their son or daughter never came home; their friend or lover was brutally shot and killed in front of their eyes.

Looking back the past that is not so long ago in terms of history is quite interesting because we get to learn stories and narrative accounts of many ordinary people who witnessed or even participated in the events are still alive to share their accounts of what happened during that time. By referring as ordinary people, I meant that those people are not the ones in power who write the history in their favor - who craft their own narrative of the past regardless of what really happened. As Orwell put it well in 1984,"Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future". This has led to two main, yet very different, narratives of this 8888 Uprising that have shaped the subsequent fate of our country.

One of the two is that people were provoked by underground and overground terrorists and by those influenced by modern-day colonial interests; people became lawless and unruly riots spread across the country; the country was deteriorating in many aspects; eventually, when the country was on the brink of collapsing, in September 1988, the Myanmar Army had to take this holy responsibility to save the country - "in order to bring a timely halt to deteriorating conditions on all facets of the country."

The other one is that economic frustrations and general resentment towards the one-party rule of the then ruling Burma Socialist Programme Party led to series of peaceful protests by students in 1988; then the protests spread across the nation and joined by people from all walks of life. The brutal crackdowns of police killed thousands of innocent peaceful protestors. The protests were also made it appear lawless by releasing criminals who would exercise atrocities such as public beheadings and robberies of all kinds including state-owned factories. In September 1988, the military violently broke up the protests, took power, and imposed martial law. Many protestors and political activists who were not killed during the uprising were arrested and put in prisons. Their families were under surveillance of MI.

These two differing or rather contradicting narratives have shaped our present and led to where we are today. The first version was obviously imposed in many ways - through series of state-own media,  state-sponsored films, songs etc. Anyone who questioned that version of the 8888 was either arrested or under watchful eyes of MI.

Sometimes, I wonder what if we believed the first version of the 88 and did never know the truth. It is very convenient to believe it because we grew up with state media, watching state-sponsored films and songs, being taught at the state schools. When I left for the U.S. in 2003 while the country was still under the military regime, I was very much afraid to talk about politics in my country when being asked by professors at my college in Colorado. I grew up learning that discussing politics meant risking yourself to be arrested or your family to get in trouble. So it was very possible for us to never really know the true story of the 88 and its subsequent events.

Prior to learning about Noble Aye's story, it made me wonder what made it possible to learn about the truth and also what made it possible to lead to where we are today - we are at least no longer under the military rule, even though the changes have not been satisfactory.

I felt grateful for the opportunity to learn about her story, more importantly, to learn the truth. Her story would also enlighten many people like me in our country who do not know about what it is like to be a political prisoner; what it is like being confined and losing all your freedom, and your life being destroyed just for your belief and for your action to preserve or expose the truth. I found it quite irresponsible of those people who say that our democratic transition was peaceful and harmless. Saying that disregards many families like Noble Aye's who suffered so much and were destroyed. There were also many families who never got to see their husbands, daughters or sons again.

People like Noble Aye are not famous nor popular but their strength and their unshakable faith in truth, justice and freedom, along with their persistent actions to live up to that faith, collectively challenged the imposed narrative, crafted by those in power, and eventually challenged their illegitimate rule over the country. It is because of their unseen struggles, and unheard but very strong and brave voices, we have been able to reach where we are today even though much is still needed to be done for a better and brighter future we all want to reach.

On Pursuit of Happiness vs. Pursuit of Meaning

The distinction between happiness and meaningfulness has a long history back to thousands of years in philosophy and religions. In short, a pursuit of happiness is seeking to live by pleasures, in other words, by taking things from outside to satisfy one’s senses. A pursuit of meaning, on the other hand, is seeking to live for something bigger than the ‘self’ - which could be our family, our work, or any other divine thing or Nature. 

I do not know enough philosophical references on happiness vs. meaning so I would like to express it using my own personal experience. I grew up in Monywa, a city in the middle of Myanmar. It is a relatively big city but compared to Yangon, it could be considered quite rural. On a funny note, a friend of mine asked me recently if I went to "ILBC" in Monywa since I studied in the U.S. and now fluent in English. Back in those days, there was no such private school in Monywa. I did not have any exposure to speaking or learning English besides the public school textbooks. 

I did not enjoy school much even though I did quite well - I was on one of the top 3 most of my years in basic education. The teachers or my classmates did not like it when I asked questions. I tried to understand and to make sense of what I read in textbooks but it was nearly impossible. I was in high school in Monywa, when I first learned about the education in the U.S. from an information section by Sayar U Tin Maung Than, who recently came back after studying at Harvard Kennedy School.

After I finished 10th grade exams, after series of arguments with my father who was against my desire to study abroad because I was a young girl, I left Monywa for Yangon to prepare myself to study abroad. I completely dropped going to the medical school in Mandalay. Long story short, I got into one of the private liberal arts in the U.S with a full scholarship for 4 yrs. My family was in no position to fund for my education otherwise.

And my plan was supposed to come back home after four years and to contribute something good to the society back home with the education I would get from the U.S. At least, that was what my parents wanted. For me, I just wanted to be outside of home to be free and independent, both intellectually and personally. 

The year I graduated from Colorado College, thinking back now, was a turning point - or rather I was at an intersection between pursuing a life for myself or a life for others. To be honest, I was quite lost. I did not even know clearly what I was trying to choose or what I wanted to do. So when you don’t know what you want or don’t know who you are, you become less in control of your life. You mostly get into the “default” setting, meaning you just try to follow a life as it has been prescribed by the society you are in.

To make it long story short, that default setting went on for another six years in New York. But the narrative I said in my head goes like this “people should be taking care of themselves. If you are doing good for yourself, you are “automatically’’ contributing good to the society.” I was completely just living for myself and myself alone. Well, I was not a bad or mean person - I still cared a lot for my friends but in a larger part, I believed that I should just live a “happy” life. I worked at a small company - even though work did not mean anything to me but I still worked very hard - there was a small part of me hidden inside that wanted to learn, grow and also help others around.

But I felt like I was working so that I could enjoy life. New York has endless stimulations to keep you busy. During that time, I went back to a graduate school for Accounting. Because after liberal arts education, I felt I needed to pick up some very specific skills to make use of myself at a work place. That was pretty much all my 20s.

So my 20s were spent pursuing a happy life and living for myself. Then when I hit 30, it hit me quite badly - I felt so bad that I had not done much and felt that I wasted most of my 20s. I needed urgently to find myself again and to be back in control of my life. And in one of the business classes I took in my last semester at the grad school, one thing got stuck in my mind, “in order to change something, you need to get back to the core.” After series of questioning myself and talking with my brother, to whom I’m most grateful for helping me through that existential crisis, I decided to move back to my home country. In order to find myself, I needed to get back to the core, where I started, and to be closer to my family and in my home country.

Since I have decided to pursue a meaningful life - to live for more than just for myself, I have been through two major processes - learning and giving. Personally, I have been learning rigorously about myself, about others and about things that I was very curious about- through asking questions to myself, reading, watching documentaries, listening to others, meditating. Professionally, I have committed myself to help and serve others around me, and to give back with the best of my abilities and skills I have.

This past four or five years have been a quite satisfying endeavor for me - it has not been easy at all like when I was just pursuing a happy life. There have been stresses and struggles involved but I feel now that I am a much happier person. 

I’ve recently realized that, besides learning and giving, there is another difficult step in the pursuit of meaning — a spiritual part — it is about love. I still do not quite understand what it really means to love. In general, I think we can learn to love by being more open to life, appreciating people and things, even little things, accepting and content with what we have.

To me as mentioned above, a meaningful life —a life of learning, giving and loving — is more enjoyable and satisfying. We have this capacity, intelligence and compassion to live for more than ourselves. Through this life long journey in pursuit of meaning, we may be able to expand ourselves intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.

On Eliminating Our Blind Spots

"The point is to try to eliminate your blind spots — the things that keep us from grasping the bigger picture. And look, even though I grew up in this neighbourhood — in this incredible, multicultural neighbourhood that was a little rough at that time — I find myself here before you as an American, white, male movie star. I don’t have a clue where my blind spots begin and end. But looking at the world as it is, and engaging with it, is the first step toward finding our blind spots. And that’s when we can really start to understand ourselves better ... and begin to solve some problems." - Matt Damon, MIT Commencement Speech 2016

A few days ago, I was having a conversation with my parents trying to understand how we grew up, our experience and ideas around us have shaped who we have become as adults. Even within the same family, I realised how differently my mother and I grew up as a young child and teenager.

I hardly had any clue about a life my mother had, as much as my mother could only have little idea about experience I've gone through as a girl from Monywa, Colorado to New York and then back in Myanmar.

My mother is a very strong woman, my role model, who always guides us with her great values. She grew up in a poor family, and as a second eldest of 9 siblings, she grew up babysitting all her younger siblings, and helping my grandmother in all household chores. She eventually had to drop out of school at 9th grade as all the family responsibilities and also financial situation did not afford her to continue school. 

I grew up in a lower middle-class household - my father was a junior civil servant when I was a kid. Both my brother and I went to a primary school in a poor neighbourhood of Monywa, a town in the middle of Myanmar. We had daily allowance of 1 or 2 kyats in primary school and only got to eat shrimps once a year. When I started dreaming back in high school about studying abroad, my friends thought I was out of my mind to dare to think of something "impossible". My father was also strongly against the idea because a young girl was supposed to be under his protection, and he also thought it was insane to forgo the medical school and try something completely uncertain -- winning a full scholarship from one of the top liberal arts colleges in the U.S. Anyway, to make the long story short, against all odds, I made it all the way!

Studying in Colorado for 4 years, and living in New York for a few years, I'd become complacent. I had no clue where my blind spots begin and end. I thought I had a pretty good idea about life and the world. Eventually, I had to painfully embrace the fact that I had no clue about who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. So, taking all the possible risks, I moved back to my home country nearly 3 years ago. In the beginning, I was in a series of shocks - I was in pain to know how clueless and ignorant I was for all those years. 

Through my own pain, I had a little bit of idea about how painful it must be to be rid of opportunities and resources to better yourself and improve your life chances, to feel uncertain and hopeless about tomorrow, and to be victimised for just being poor. I had a lot of questions about "what ifs" - what if I grew up in a poorer household, what if my parents made wrong choices about their life, what if I did not even have enough resources to try to get into a liberal arts college in the U.S. 

Since I moved back 3 years ago, I've been in this constant process of rocking the boat, both inward and outward, through reading, traveling, meditating, listening to others and watching documentaries. I've been trying to shake up all my beliefs and everything I held dear to my heart and mind. I've kept trying to understand alternative points of view and information even if those are so against my own beliefs. I've learnt to approach anything with healthy skepticism. 

Even then, I know that I'm still far from getting closer to the truth because I still have my fair share of blind spots -- biases, prejudices and intellectual limitations. In the process, I'm also aware that I'm subject to arrogance and complacency every now and then. 

Eliminating our blind spots, in the process of actively searching and learning, is a life-long endeavour. I hope I never stop learning and actively engaging myself with life and the world before me.

When You Believe in Choice

Labastide-Esparbairenque, France

“Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. "—David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

I love Wachowski brothers' movies—Matrix triology,V for Vendentta and Cloud Atlas. Their movies' recurring themes are a hero journey, and how the hero makes choices along that journey—usually the hero starts out with being completely ignorant and unaware of the world around or rather confused, at some point, he or she wakes up, becomes aware and starts fighting for things like justice, freedom and overall ignorance.

I see life as a long journey—maybe it is not as fascinating as in Wachowski's movies. Each and every choice we make, small and big, leads us to a new path. First and foremost, choosing which direction we want to go in this journey is very important.

Looking back seeing choices and decisions I had made, I see that sometimes I made choices, without thinking much, either out of social pressure or trying to meet existing social standards but there were also times when I made deliberate choices based on certain beliefs or strong desire to achieve something. Either deliberate or automatic, these choices have become the paths that form where I am heading in this journey.

I have made a fair share of mistakes and unwise choices in my life, either out of sheer ignorance or emotional turbulence. There are also times when I make good and wise choices based on clarity on possible consequences and understanding the depth of my own pain and problems or just out of compassion or kindness for myself or another being.

About three years ago, I was completely lost and going through an existential crisis. My therapist and counselor, who helped me through it, was my brother. He was very compassionate, and emotionally available enough to give me guidance and helped me understand my struggle and myself. I am forever grateful to him for that.

When I expressed him how thankful I was, he said "No, I did not help you. You helped yourself. I've become the person I am today because of your guidance and help when I was young and ignorant."

I did not even think that I had helped him. It was just out of "love and kindness" that I gave him certain guidance in the past. Consequently, I am benefitting from it, but then he could have chosen to ignore and not help me.

Recently, I've been struggling or I've been confused about certain things and my recent choices. I've been feeling that life is just meaningless and it is pointless to do anything meaningful. Whenever I get online and read news, I feel hopeless because I am constantly being fed up with the news how corporations are destroying quality of human lives, wrecking the environment, governments facilitating all these corporations to rob us (and hiding their money offshore), media brainwashing us to hate certain groups of people or blaming their selected situations.

Just to clear my contaminated mind and to have a break from the civilisation, I'd made a choice to go on a retreat— Writers and Artists Retreat in Southern France. I told them that I am not a writer, I just wanted to read, think deeply and just simply retreat.

Being surrounded by this beautiful nature, not contaminated by the civilisation outside, and good hearts and kindness of the writers in the retreat, I am feeling hopeful and having faith in humanity once again. I did not fully understand why I chose to come here but I realized now that this is exactly what I needed — to feel hopeful again.

Believing in choice, instead of fate, is not easy. It is difficult and it often feels like a burden because we are responsible for our choices. Our choices shape who we are, which direction we are going in this life journey and how we impact those around us and the world.

I may not be able to make wise choices every time.  But, I will always try to choose love, hope, truth, courage and justice. And again and again.

What It Means to Really Love Someone

"Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart's revelation that another person is every bit as real as your are...Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavour...Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self."  - Liking is for cowards. Go for what hurts.

When I was only in pre-school, during a scene in a movie in which a boy and a girl were showing some romantic gestures, I commented by saying, "Oh they got together!" My mom was quite upset that how little person like me could know such things.

So that shows that it is in our human nature to be quite aware of romantic connection and love since very early in life. But, as I grew older, I learned that I did not know anything about love at all. All I know about love is quite shaped by our society and popular culture.

Whether you are man or woman, old or young, whichever society you grew up, or what religion you belong to, you, as a human being, want to love and be loved. It is a basic human need. But, what does it really mean to really love someone?  I'm going to share what I thought of love over the course of my live in different phases - from teenage to my adulthood now.

Love is a beautiful fairytale.

This is quite plain and simple. As a young girl in late teens, I thought love starts out with a boy and a girl liking each other so much, then falling in love and then getting married and living happily ever after.

Love is dealing with an annoying human being.

I really enjoyed all the fun part of beginning of any courting. It is quite fun to be pursued and chased by someone. But then, there came to a point, all my fairytale romantic fantasies shattered as harsh realities hit. I was still quite young, early to mid twenties, and packed with insecurities myself. I fell in love with fantasies and an idea of a perfect boyfriend. But I lacked the maturity and understanding of what it means to be really close to someone in his all imperfections after the honeymoon phase. It was all about endless fights and verbal abuses in every way. After three years, I decided to end it. For those three years, I really thought love sucked and it was just quite annoying. One thing I learned from it was that I want to be treated with respect and kindness. It is a basic need and anyone who is not that, I would not even bother to talk to.

Love is a goal to accomplish with certain expected results.

I dated someone right after my three-year relationship. That did not last long but it was quite fun experience - I got to enjoy the fun honeymoon phase of courting.  We did not really have a kind of connection that could hold us together past the honeymoon phase.

I stayed single for a couple of years. Partly because New York City is such a great place to be single. You meet new people all the time.You flirt here and there, and then move on and look for what is the next best thing. Then eventually through all those socialising and friends' parties, I met someone really amazing. It was all fun and exciting as it is always with beginning of any relationship.  I felt really connected with him - we made each other laugh all the time. I started learning that no one is perfect - I accepted that even that amazing human being I fell in love would not be perfect.

However, over the course of the relationship, I started to focus more on signs and indicators of loving affections from him than really enjoying each and every moment with him. What he does or does not do became more of a big deal than our time spent together and learning about each other. I was really focused on the results than the process of deeply connecting with him. As he was a really great man and things had gone well, I wanted it to be in a "successful" relationship, that would fulfil, again, all my romantic fantasies. ( But I never thought of marrying him or anyone in my life for that matter.)  It was obviously no longer fun anymore. I am sure that he went through a series of doubts and I was even more insecure. Eventually, it led to a breakup.

Love is pain so I must avoid it.

I was in a tremendous amount of pain. At the same time, I made a very big decision - a decision to move back to my home country. Well, I did not move back because of my heartbreak. But I did think that big change like that somehow would help me mend my heart. It took me a very long time - more than a year to recover from it. While mending my heart, I found a job that I'm more and more falling in love with day by day. I've been focusing on learning about myself and on my professional development. For a long time, I felt that love is a pain so I must avoid it at all costs and I emotionally shut myself down.

Love is a courage to face the fear of rejection.

After I recovered from that painful heartbreak, I was thinking that "Maybe I don't "need" someone to love or be loved. Maybe I have been socially conditioned to think that I need love to justify my worthiness as a human being." In many ways, I am a very self-sufficient person and professionally very capable, or at least I want to think so. So why would I bother to take all the pain and emotional inconvenience of being with someone? Then I realised that I was lying to myself. It is quite comforting to reject something before it rejects you because being truly known makes you vulnerable and potentially be rejected.

So I realised that I was just being a coward - I did not want to take the risk of being rejected because it is really terrifying. I then learned that love is a courage to face that fear of rejection by being truly known and letting yourself be vulnerable.

Real sustainable love is a process and a choice...

After giving a lot of thoughts and feelings to understand what people in loving sustainable relationships go through and analysing my own experience with relationships, I am slowly learning that it is quite easy to fall in love with a fantasy. We all love the "idea" of falling in love with someone and fantasise about all the excitements and happy moments.  We are often more obsessed with the end results than enjoying the moment and bothering to get to know someone.

I think that the real sustainable lasting love is a process - a process of understanding someone, with all the kindness, generosity and bottomless empathy, or at least an attempt to understand someone, and at the same time, surrendering your pride and exposing yourself to be known. And during the process, you make a choice to be in that process again and again, regardless of fear and doubt that the other person might not choose you.