Touched by little things

Yesterday I read a status on a youth forum: What was the first gift you received from your lover? My lover is now my husband. Every time I think back to the first gift he gave me, I feel both funny and warm.

When people are courting, they often give each other cosmetics, jewelry, clothes, etc., but my husband - the first gift he gave me was 5 corn cobs! 5 corn cobs that were boiled, steaming hot, and smelled so good, given at 9pm, just because I had texted him earlier and had complained that I was suddenly hungry. It was only later that I found out that he had run all over the streets to find a late-night corn shop, then begged them to stay and boil another batch after they had hurriedly set up their stalls. I never told him that his funny, honest corn cobs had made me more confident in my decision to choose him as my husband.

My girlfriends and sisters often confide in me about love, casually mentioning a few criteria for choosing a life partner. A girl choosing a man to accompany and rely on for life, in addition to feelings, also considers many criteria: education, finances, job, family background... There is nothing wrong with that. After all, buying a shirt or a pair of pants requires going from store to store to choose, try on, look at it, hang it up and put it down, let alone choosing... a husband!

But nowadays, it seems that women are more realistic than before. Many of the women I know “score” their boyfriends through expensive gifts: designer bags, fancy phones, diamond jewelry, fashionable clothes, imported roses, romantic candlelit dinners at Western restaurants… Those beautiful things are indeed liked by everyone, but are they a measure of the sincerity of our lover? Are they “plus points” to consider the possibility of a long-term relationship?

I think, true love is not based on big, grand things; on the contrary, love is multiplied and silently enduring by countless small things, so small that many times we ignore them, do not pay attention to them, consider them obvious. Love is when you wash the dishes, I pick vegetables. Love is a bowl of porridge, a pill when you are sick, tired. Love is tolerating each other when we are sad, grumpy, irritable, ugly. Love is respect, sharing, forgiveness, taking on responsibility, helping.

When living in simplicity, we often forget its value, constantly longing to look up and compare it with the glittering ostentation of other people's lives; when it is gone, we are shocked and regretfully realize that in order to have the simplicity for us, that person had to suppress within himself the hardships, toils, sacrifices, and efforts. In the end, the fireworks only light up for a moment and then go out, leaving us with only a small, simple, warm pot of embers, but helping us through the cold night.