The little girl writes a love story about a cat and a dog. The story, interestingly, does not have a happy ending: “Will you please marry me?” The dog says to the cat, “Oh! No! No way!” The cat scoffs and walks away. And I am amused by the innocent “cruelty” of this childish play.

It’s fortunate that they are still so young and under the protection of loving adults.

We adults, every one of us, being treated to an experience like this, if we laugh, it must be laughing with tears. Stand-up comedy has this effect. We know that everyday life is mundane, we know that there are many hurt, everyone of us has hurt others and has been hurt, and we, being sensitive humans, all have one thing or another gnaws at our hearts. The comedians, instead of crying, make jokes out of the dullness or the sadness of it.

It might be the indifference of one, or the coarseness of another. It might be a pettiness, it might be a miscommunication, because the self almost inevitably gets in the way.

It might be the realization, at a mature age, that romance and love is not exactly as books or movies have portrayed or we have imagined it would be, that even if we have it, maybe especially when we have it, to hold on fast to oneself and all one’s other roles are as important, to know oneself, examine oneself and pursuit happiness and self-realization does not end at “live happily after”.

Or it’s the severe self-criticism comes with the gnaws: Am I showing off? (but what is there in my life to show off?) Am I being insincere? Have I done this or that wrong? Am I being too self-absorbed to notice the feelings of others? Am I being indelicate?

If, say, we are created by our circumstances, we are this or that because we were born in this or that family, at a certain time in history, at a certain place in this world, we went to this school and read that book, all of these have made us who we are. Your father’s ambition has almost certainly helped to make you an extra anxious person, or your mother’s vanity has caused a hyper-sensitiveness in you. You could argue this way.

I, myself, indeed who is not at one time or another, being pushed, cornered by one thing or another, startle to find the poison, the venom, in my thought.

Then I believe, in general situations, we always have a choice. We always have the choice of self-examination, of getting a better self-knowledge and loving others. We always have the choice of communicating health and ease and courage.

选择爱 xuǎnzé ài (choose love): it is a choice. 选 has the “walking radical”, 择 the “hand radical”: it is a verb, it is an act. 恨 hèn, the word for “hatred” in Chinese, interestingly, also has the meaning of “sad, complain, rankle, grudge, regret, resentment”. Beware, beware, that it should stew and become poisonous.