1. "Ring, ring, ring...". I looked at the screen; it was Mom calling. I hesitated, then pressed silent and put the phone face down on the table. I dreaded Mom's calls lately. Waiting for the call to end, I texted my younger sister. She said Mom had just called her for an hour, crying and complaining about family problems. When she didn't want to listen anymore, Mom got angry and hung up to call me.
The thing is, my sister recently got a boyfriend. He's from the same village, also divorced, and he's now pursuing her and expressing his desire to start a new life together. My mother strongly opposes it. She uses harsh words to insult and berate them, with the ultimate goal of making them break up. My mother says she only "wants what's best for my sister," because if she lets her marry him, they'll suffer in the future, as both are in poor health and struggling financially, and there's the issue of "his children and my children"... The conflict between my mother and my sister is so intense that initially, neighbors and relatives tried to mediate, but eventually, everyone was afraid and avoided them.
No matter how much I tried to explain, my mother wouldn't understand, so I finally spoke frankly: "I think you don't love my sister as much as you say. If you truly loved her, you would be happy that at her age she has someone to love, and that she loves him too. Right or wrong, good or bad, it's her life, you shouldn't interfere." Then she flew into a rage: "I don't love her? What about all the time I've taken care of her and her child? If I didn't love her, I would have ignored her a long time ago," and she went on for half a day recounting all the good things she had done for my sister. Finally, I managed to interject and ask: "You love her, but do you know what she needs? She needs you to listen and respect her, but you've never done that."
2. My mother was sick and hospitalized, so we sent my youngest sister home from work to take care of her. Just one day after she arrived, my mother and I had a huge argument. The reason was that my mother had gallbladder inflammation, which severely affected her digestion, and she hadn't been able to eat anything for several days. When she regained consciousness, she only wanted a little plain rice porridge. But my sister insisted that she needed meat porridge for nutrition and to regain strength quickly. Of course, my mother couldn't eat it, and my sister was annoyed because she "only wanted what was best for her," but my mother was being fussy and refusing to eat. After arguing back and forth for a while, my sister angrily threw the porridge away and went out to the hallway to cry!
My youngest sister lives with me. She's 26 but still can't be independent. Every day, she only works in the mornings, and spends the afternoons lounging at home playing on her phone. I've encouraged her to find a part-time job or learn a trade, but she refuses; for years, she's just been lying around like that. Until one day, I overheard her telling someone that she chose an easy job so she could have time to cook and pick up my children in the afternoons. I was shocked, because I've made it clear to her many times that I don't need her to do these things. And in fact, in a whole year, I only asked her to pick up my children about 4-5 times. So she thinks I'm ungrateful, that she's doing good things for me and all I do is complain about her laziness and lack of independence.
3. The petty arguments in my family only bring ridicule when told. But from these incidents, I realized a much bigger problem in my family. That is, the way we show affection for each other sometimes causes suffering for both sides. In that way of loving, we often stubbornly insist on doing what we think is right and good, without truly opening our hearts to listen to what the person we love really needs and wants, whether it's reasonable, or how we can find a way to reconcile both sides. Sometimes I don't even know if that's love or not. Because love should be intertwined with empathy and warmth, so why does it hurt more and more?
There's an old story I read a long time ago about a father who painstakingly grew cabbage year after year because his wife loved making pickled cabbage. The mother painstakingly pickled cabbage because her son liked it. But in the end, the truth was the son didn't really like it; he just ate it to please his mother because he saw her so passionately making pickled cabbage. And so, the father became even more enthusiastic about growing cabbage.
We love someone. But does that person need our love? What is the right way to love someone? This question, seemingly simple and easy, is actually not so straightforward. There's a song that says, "Whether we love right or wrong, as long as we feel pain, we still love." In love, we may endure bitterness and hardship so that the person we love can be happy. But if love causes us pain, and that person pains too, is that really love?
Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/hoc-cach-thuong-mot-nguoi-post797661.html
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