In Exchange for Love

True love is love given even while the giver remains unhappy. Everyone loves easily enough when love brings them joy. When a father embraces his child in tenderness, pressing kisses across the child's neck and face, the child's soft skin naturally feels the prick of the father's stubbled beard. "Papa, let me go, it hurts!"—hearing such words, the father only holds tighter, kissing still, and says, "You silly thing, I'm showing you affection! Don't you know I love you, my boy?" The father refuses to see his child's suffering. The entire gift of this love belongs to the father alone, for meanwhile, under the weight of his affection, the child is in pain.

In place of love, emptiness or sorrow may arrive instead—happiness does not always come. And we cannot bear the thought that love, this thing in the world, was never meant for us. To love someone while inflicting hurt, while leaving them in discomfort—that is only selfishness wearing another name.

You wonder: does there truly exist in this world someone who loves with such complete unselfishness?

Yes, certainly such people exist. But fate does not allow us to remain with them.

One day we obtain everything, and yet—the one person worth keeping, the one worth having near us always—we are denied even that much fortune.