The happy fall in love less often. The greater one's sorrow, the more urgently one seeks another to share one's life, hoping to lighten the weight. Sometimes a person discovers in themselves a melancholy they'd never truly noticed before. We all carry such sorrows within us—things that either resolve of their own accord, or don't, yet remain subtle enough not to threaten our very existence. So I was saying: when a person falls in love, they suddenly discover that something wonderful has taken root inside them—a tenderness they never knew they needed, or at least never thought to seek in this way. Love sometimes removes from us a particular emptiness whose very existence we were unaware of. Had we known, perhaps we'd have tried to fill it long before; and the fact that we feel so much better once it's gone proves its reality. So one might say: every love is essentially a story of dispelling melancholy or emptiness. We want someone beside us because life feels incomplete in ways we cannot name. We don't know what we're searching for. It's possible we're not searching for anything at all—we've lost nothing, after all, so what would we seek? But this much is certain: we are all looking for someone who will say to us, "Yes, we two are well. We will be better still. You are doing beautifully—keep going. I am here beside you." Banal as these words may sound, people truly long to hear them. Once you find someone who speaks them, you want to stay—and that is what we call love. Yet at love's beginning, melancholy often deepens. Two complete strangers entering a bond need time to understand each other. In that time, doubt creeps in: Am I making a mistake? But gradually, as their understanding grows clearer, as their thoughts and lives become increasingly interdependent, the early melancholy transforms into contentment. Let me explain love another way. Suppose you're going out. You leave home, step onto the street, wait for a rickshaw. Suddenly you spot an electric rickshaw—faster than the old-fashioned kind. You didn't even know such things existed. You climb in. It's comfortable, the fare is the same, and it gets you there quicker. What happens next? From then on, whenever you ride a rickshaw, you find yourself hoping for that electric one. Because you've tasted its pleasure. Think about it: you knew nothing of that rickshaw before, had never heard it mentioned. Riding it, you found qualities you'd never imagined possible in a rickshaw. Your life would have continued perfectly well without them—would have, because you'd never conceived of such things, never imagined they could exist. What we don't know about, however useful it might be, we manage without. We live our lives unburdened by it.
But once you know it exists, you cannot live without it!
Love is much like this. There exists within our minds a certain melancholy, a certain void that we cannot even recognize until someone or something arrives to fill those empty spaces.
We are all, truly and genuinely, searching for someone who fits our hearts perfectly. Something is missing from life, something is missing! We cannot even understand what is absent until we possess it. We do not know whom we desire. But if someone arrives in our life such that, upon having them, we think, “Yes, yes! This is exactly whom I was searching for!”—that is what we call love.
When I meet the person of my dreams, and I wish to remain in their company, that is love. Everything they are and are not, the way they are and the way they are not, what I have found in them and what I have not—all of this becomes perfectly aligned with my heart. When I look at them, I often think, what a person! Exactly as my heart desired! I have no other longings left for life. Even if life grants me no other riches, it is enough!
The curious thing is, I never imagined I would need what I have now received, nor that possessing it would bring me such joy, nor that someone could exist who is so perfectly attuned to my heart. This feeling itself was unknown to me. I never knew that feeling could be so profound, so beautiful. How could I have imagined what I did not know?
I look at them and think: they are the person of my dreams, yet I never dreamed this dream. And yet I know now—I know it with certainty—that all this while I was searching for them in my heart. I understand that I was waiting for them!
If we had not seen the walking stick before our eyes, who would have thought that leaning upon it while climbing the mountain might ease our pain? When we read an unfamiliar good book, we think, “Yes! This is the book my heart has been seeking all along!” When we watch an unfamiliar beautiful film, we think, “Ah, the way this person lives—I have always wanted such a life! The film is exactly what my heart desired!” When we stumble upon some unknown foreign melody on YouTube, and it moves us so deeply that we listen to it again and again, we say, “Oh! I have fallen in love with this melody!”… Yet I knew nothing of that melody’s existence before; I did not even know such an instrument existed in the world until today! And here I am, thinking, “This melody and I have fallen in love!”
How could I know, before someone arrives in my life, how much I will love them or not love them? If they come and I love them, shall I not say with ease, “I have fallen in love with them”?
Love dispels from within us a melancholy whose very existence we never knew! Love fills that void whose presence we never felt before love arrived!
It is a wondrous magic! Love is the cure for an illness of your heart—an illness whose existence you never knew!
# Translation
That melancholy you have searched for all your life, yet never found—though its departure would set you free and make you whole—love, when it comes into your life, will cast it far away! Tell me yourself: is there any greater magic in this world, any stranger mystery than this?