Love for Eternal Company and Love with Normal Attitude. Analyse the Background for the Two Modes and Share Your Views on Which one You Would Prefer.

Question 1.5: Love can be classified into two modes: Love for Eternal Company and Love with a Grateful Heart/ Normal Attitude. Analyse the background for the two modes and share your views on which one you would prefer.

While to be or not to be is the toughest question for Hamlet, to love or not to love is a great question for humankind. Yet even upon deciding to love, there is still the question of how to love and treat the relationship. From time immemorial, people have lived and loved, and in different cultures there have been different modes of love. In our society, love can mainly be classified into two modes, which seemingly conflict with each other. The first mode is named Love for Eternal Company, in which the couple treat their relationship as a lifelong bond, not only of love but of commitment and responsibility; the other mode, Love with a Grateful Heart, is characterised by a grateful attitude or the Common Heart, as is manifested in Zhong Yong, the Confucian text.

In this essay, we will unfold and analyse the background on the two, with examples and cases given to illustrate the two attitudes. Following will be our views on which attitude we prefer, although it is essential to note that a definitive mode of love does not exist, for each mindset has its benefits and drawbacks whose significance depends on the situation. With the analysis and sharing, the idea of romantic love, that of our culture at least, will be better understood.

In this day and age, a lifelong love affair only appears to be a fairy tale; this was, however, a widely held axiom that dated back decades ago. Ironically, China, or specifically speaking, Hong Kong, was a place where citizens had no freedom to choose their own spouses; rather, their marriages were arranged by go-betweens, in which the couples might not even have the chance to meet and know each other until the day of the wedding. As a result, the marriages were not based on one's affection for another, but mostly on the families' economy and social status. For example, in the documentary "? . ? . ?" produced by vartivist the couple claimed that they never "dated" each other. Mrs. Kwan, the owner's wife , married Mr. Kwan mainly because her father died and she had to become the bread-winner of the impoverished family.

Given the background, the follow-up question must be: how could the couples maintain lifelong relationships only by knowing their partner's names in advance? Indeed, the majority overlook the fact that our society then was way too different from that of nowadays. Firstly, unlike today, getting a divorce was something, for the entire clan, to be despised and ashamed of. Therefore, even if the husband and wife really did not get along well with each other, they would try to endure and accept each other's flaws instead of splitting up the marriage in order to protect the reputation of the families. Another worth-mentioning reason is the difference in the extent to which romantic (though it may not be romantic literally) love played in the old days. Romantic love took up a considerable portion, yet definitely not the whole, of a person's life; in other words, romantic love is forever important, but not always of utmost importance. Comparatively speaking, society was more stable, and life was, in some ways, easier. The married had their own ambitions in life apart from tying the knot with someone, and often had a common goal which they could both endeavour to achieve. Another example can be drawn from the same documentary, in which Mr. Cheung and Mrs. Cheung, the owners of ???? , did briefly have dates (e.g. watched movies) before getting married, whereas they hardly agree that passion plays the paramount role in their relationship. Even after their marriage, they seldom have spent time dating; rather, they have been working and collaborating well in their shop nearly every day, and each has their own part to play— Mr. Cheung is in charge of every task that is supposed to be done in kitchen, whereas Mrs. Cheung deals with the client and packaging of goods. According to Mrs. Cheung, it was the common goals they have that truly bring them together all these years, including trying their best to run their shop well and share the upbringing of their son.

To add on to the previous point, the Triangle theory of love can be introduced to better illustrate the idea. The theory, developed by the psychologist Robert Sternberg, states that relationships consist of three components: passion, intimacy, and commitment. Passion refers to lust, combining attraction and sexual desire; intimacy is a close bonding between people, sharing the thoughts and feelings with one another, whereas commitment means the determined decision to stay with the partner in the long-term, and, it is always commitment that keeps the relationship alive and long-lasting. The main reason that contributes