We all know that the humans, urged by their bellies, at first, foraged and hunted and moved about and sheltered themselves in any cave they could find.
They did not have a home. The whole world was their home.
When did they build their first homes? And if you dwelt at one place instead of moving about searching for food, you will have to be able to satisfy your most basic need–feed your belly–at or around your dwelling place.
The Chinese character for “home” explains when and how they did this in a vivid way. This is how they scratched on a bone(they did not have paper yet at that time) to mean the word “home”:
The upper part is the roof, the house–the picture any child would draw for a home, and the lower part, can you guess what it is?
If that’s not obvious enough, how about this one?–after thousands of years, it evolved into a more picturesque way:
It’s plain enough to see the house, nor it’s difficult to see what’s in it: an animal, a pig.
But, I hear you asking, what does pig have anything to do with it?
Well, how do you think it’s possible for them to settle instead of chasing after animals for food?
Keep the animal, keep the food, at or around your dwelling place.
Pig still is the most common household animal in China, and pork the most common meat: history is not very far away.
Till this day, in villages where the industry lifestyle still has not eliminated all the ways of traditional living, there are still households keeping pigs in their yards for the feast of the New Year or, for that matter, any feast.
With time, it evolved into this one which the ancient Chinese used for a very long time:
The house is still clear enough, the pig though, becomes more abstract: you could still see the head, the body, the front legs and the back if you looked hard enough.
And this character 家jia1, eventually becomes this one which we use today:
The upper part, the house, simplified into a roof, the lower part, the pig, becomes more difficult to tell its origin.
It’s not very romantic, is it? But how practical it is!
To my question “What is love?”, answered me a seven-year-old girl in a calm and matter-of-fact manner as if I just asked her what her favorite color is.
That’s in a way related to the origins of the English word “love”.
“Love” comes from an old English word lufu; also from a root lubhyati “desire’, Latin ibet ‘it is pleasing’, libido ‘desire’, also by leave ‘permission’ and lief ‘dear, pleasant’.
So there is a lot to say about love.
First it is a desire, and this word desire too has an interesting origin.
Imagine in the beginning of human history where there were barely any man-made things around you: no buildings of any sort, no roads, no cars, no…..basically most of the things come into your sight when you walk down on a street in modern times.
So when you are out in the open on a clear, cool autumn night sitting in front of a nice campfire, what do you see when you look up?
Yes. Millions of stars!
It must have inspired the human heart in the same way since that very first humans looked up. There is even the same phrase both in English and in Chinese “reach for the stars”–伸手摘星 shen1shou3zhai1xing1.
“Wonder of wonders” thinking in the heart of the first Homo sapiens. “What are they? Bright and blinking?” And the longer he looks at them, the more mysterious, the brighter they appear. Unconsciously, he reaches out his hand: “down the stars!—I de-sire!”
And that’s–possibly–how the word “desire” comes from: de-‘down’ + sidus, sider-“star”. (And considering that with no books, no TV, no phone, no computer, the first humans must have spent a considerable amount of time on looking at the stars, for the word “consider” examine, is also based on sider, stars. Indeed, an awful lot of things they have figured out by examining the stars.)
Do not little children, puppies, or the first flowers, the first softest greens in spring time inspire some warm, glad, tender feelings in you? For “it is pleasing”, and the Romans, the Latin-spoken people call this feeling ibet, love.
Now when the seven-year-old girl answered me what she thought was love for her, she hit on the sense that it is a permission.
It is a permission, it is an invitation, it is a trust. So now I open my door to you, I show you my most private, my most vulnerable self. I could cry and I could laugh and I am in my most comfortable skin for I am with the person that loves me and I love.
The Chinese word 爱 ai4–after a whole morning’s search and think and consider–it still puzzles me.
The upper part means hand–I would like to think it implies touching, caressing, the lower part means friend.
But this word is simplified only not very long ago–given the long history of how language evolves–from the traditional version:
The difference is there is a “heart” in the middle in this version, and the lower part is no longer “friend” but it means ‘two unstable legs”: staggering: the lover now deep in his longings eats without tasting his food, and staggers–instead of walks–around as if lost: Does it echo Plato’s saying that “love is a serious mental disease”？
And it all comes from a guy who staggers around longing to show his heart to his lover:
The staggering legs and the heart still show in the traditional version of this character that is in use till this day.
With time it evolves into this:
The heart and the shaking legs are still there!
So I would like to think that the westerners and the Chinese agree on this: love is the tender, warm, glad feeling in your heart. Love is what we long for and what we desire for what we think is dear and pleasant. Love is a permission for you to enter my heart–and carefully should you tread, for you tread on my heart!
Yet love also could stagger as everyone of us must have or will have our own experience!
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