Monday, May 9, 2011

Love

Taikun is very loveable and cute---far beyond any possible imagination I could ever came up with. The more I look at him, the more fondness I have with him. Why? Or, this question can be framed in a different way: Why parents have unconditional love to their children? This is an issue worth of further investigation.

Wikipedia says, love is a mental status regarding " an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment." Cuteness refers to the appeal commonly associated with neoteny (too difficult...or, juvenile).

When I hold Taikun, I can feel his unique smell, body temperature, and weight. Coupled with his look, all these factors trigger my emotion of affection while bringing in a sense of bonding that, "Ah, I love him. He is so cute!" While infants are so weak needing protection, this emotion and bonding, undeniably, is favorable to the baby's survival. This is perhaps the best biological accounts I can come up with regarding the nature of love.

How about psychologically part? I am intrigued when T asked me: if Taikun is not as good (that is, the obedient personality that is pleasant, and a good look as he is now) as he is now, would I still love him as much?

Mmmmm....good question. My answer is, Sure. This is my analogy: say there are two persons, A and B.

A is a person has 100 traits/ character that others can observe. Of course, maybe 98 traits are good and only 2 are "not good." Since a person with 98 good characteristics are almost perfect, others may pay more attention to the rest 2 that don't appear to be as good. This is true in particular if considered with the "there is only half cup of water left" mindset.

On the other hand, person B only has 5 good characters, and unfortunately 95 characteristics are not good. How others would perceive of B? A positivity-minded person (or, "there is still half-cup" of water) may think, "well, B is fantastic--since these these merits, thought not many, are actually most valuable human value and virtue we have ever seen." So B can be still admired since B owns these good traits that are 95% significant and important. For other 95 pieces of shortcomings, forget about them---since they only take 5%--who cares!

So, following this line of thinking, if Taikun doesn't look as good as he does, or his temper is much worse, we would still be able to find other "good traits" that we can assign more weight to, making looks or temper not as important [as they are now] any more.

Since we only have one Taikun, it is impossible to experience the other way around. Even we have a second child, there is no point to compare them since each child is an unique individual owning special characters and traits.

I think this is what "unconditional" love is. No matter how good or, how "bad" our child is, we will love him out.

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