Self-seeking

“It is not rude, it is not self-seeking…”
1 Co 13:5

True love is not self-seeking, it’s seeking of others; it’s not self-oriented, it is centered on others.

“I have been seeking a soul-mate in the sea of humanity, I will be fortunate to find one; it’s my destiny if I don’t,” wrote Hsu, the pioneer modern Chinese free verse. He did find a soul-mate in a divorced singer and actress, but the controversial marriage didn’t last all that long and the talented poet died in a fiery airplane crash at a very young age.

I often wonder whether he found true fulfillment in his relationship with his lover or not. What this man left behind were a few good lines and a tragic love story and nothing more. Although he pursued his ideal love with great intensity, it was merely an act of self-seeking for the most part. In the process of seeking his true love, he was in fact seeking fulfillment for himself.

What I tried so hard to find in my love were the things that I was severely lacking. I wanted to look for the attribute of intelligence, which I seemed to value more than any others, in a girl to make up for my deficiency. I thought I was seeking for true romance, but that wasn’t the case at all. My search for love in my youth was in reality self-seeking.

We become disillusioned when we fail to locate the things we look for from our significant others and the disillusionment inevitably leads to a messy break up. It’s unfortunate that so many people end their lives without finding the ones who can bring them true fulfillment and quench their thirst for love. Things would have been entirely different had they changed their mindset a little bit and started to focus their attention on others in their pursuit of romance. Had they done so, they would have found themselves on their journey of finding others, for the essence of love is giving, not receiving. “It’s more blessed to give than to receive” does not apply to monetary giving only; it is equally applicable as far as romantic love is concerned.

How do we seek others in our livelong journey of learning how to love?

The life of the woman at the well was obviously unfulfilled even though she had gone through five different men, for she was merely seeking the realization of her own aspirations and dreams in all the men with she had been. Her life would have been more complete had she tried to meet the needs of others. Why do half of the marriages end in divorces nowadays? There is a simple answer to this: the plague of self-seeking. We claim to fall in love with our loved ones, but it’s really self-love in disguise.