In a bar in the early morning of the summer of 2022, I was rejected in Beijing. “You don’t understand me; you only like your own fantasy,” she said. I agreed with her assessment, although reluctantly.
Later, I often found myself saying this too, mainly as a form of rejection, but sometimes to comfort myself or others.
I once read somewhere that every person actually has a guardian angel living in their heart. It doesn’t have a face, so it always borrows someone else’s face, appearing when you’re lonely, keeping you company, responding to you, understanding you, guiding you. Thus, you think you’ve fallen in love, then you get infatuated, then disappointed, then return to your guardian angel, and the cycle repeats.
Jung also talked about the process of loving as finding an imaginary projection. Plato said it’s about searching for the missing half after being split by God.
Whichever it is, love seems to have become a kind of illusion.
But it seems everyone understands this now, and the inability to love has become a kind of norm. (Because at this time, love is completely useless; it is neither real nor capable of providing any practical value that modern society cannot already provide.)
Perhaps, it is not love that has become an illusion, but illusion that has become love. I seem unable to imagine a kind of rational love detached from illusion (such as the protagonist’s feelings in Groundhog Day—after having unlimited chances to do things over, I find it hard to believe he truly loved the leading lady). Yet, a kind of love that is completely an illusion is conceivable (the classic example being the Shattered Stories of the Broken Heart), although it’s always underdeveloped.
Thinking in this way, the more rational you are, the farther love is from you. But if you dwell entirely in illusion, you either prevent everything from happening (unrequited love), or end everything from happening (tragic love). This is almost impossible.
Love, therefore, struggles, unfolds, and takes shape in the tension between fantasy and reason.