Love as motivator

Fear, fun, money, dream, passion, human spirits are all strong motivators.

This series cannot end without the mentioning of love.

I came across a newspaper clip which showed two skeletons (male and female),

still clinging to each other. Apparently they died in an earthquake.

At least the saying “live together, die alone” doesn’t apply here.

Talking about dying. We just got news that Pham Duy, one of our great song composers, has just died. He was 92. His son, also a singer, had died a month before.

Live together, die alone.

Among Pham Duy’s thousand songs is Dua Em Tim Dong Hoa Vang.

I will be your guide to a yellow-flower cave.

Love. Where do I begin, to tell the story….

We talk a lot about rights not romance.

It’s not a passable legislative piece.

You come across as “soft”, not clear-headed.

Yet when in love, if in love, we get up earlier, stay up later.

We feel this surge of energy and possibilities.

In fact, when in love, eternity and the temporal intersect.

Motivating? Yes, indeed.

Embedded in love is self-sacrifice, the need to give up one’s self.

Love of the commons, love of neighbors among whom we find that particular person we can click and connect with.

We all know by now which activity we tend to lose our sense of time.

That’s what we love to do.

And a certain person we can’t wait to see.

(not like Meeting-with-Jesus , your sales manager).

Bonnie and Clyde got struck down by a hail of bullets (I saw the car but did not count the holes). They might be outlaws, but perhaps there was love between them.

I grew up hearing about the tale of Hon Buom Mo Tien (they could not marry each other in life, so they turned butterflies forever flirting and flying).

And Ngu Lang Chuc Nu (somehow, the offending God separated them except for an annual reunion).

Then right after the Fall of Vietnam, I have a cousin (female) whose husband MIA. 35 years later, she still was unsure whether to put his picture on the altar. Rumor had it that he had been sighted leading a convoy of refugees fleeing the war zone, and perhaps had been struck down (a documentary showing someone like him standing up next to his jeep driver).

Love. It’s elusive. It’s not supposed to last forever. But motivating indeed.

And in its absence, we feel even stronger. Lobo was singing “I love you too much to ever be your friend..so let the story kind an end”.

Love is more motivating than Like.

That’s why we got the second interview. We want to confirm those first impressions.

We want to “fall in love” with the candidate.

In “Blink”, Gladwell talks about the “first time, I ever saw your face”.

We are wired to decode and detect likability and loveliness.

And there is no better team than a team who love to work on projects with one another. High fives, the long hours and “let’s see where you got it wrong” tete-a-tete.

I hope for Washington the return of love for public services. For the pride and purpose of the Republic, indivisible (let the two become one).

I saw a quote on Facebook, when in love, even in the face of 99 bad things, we still look for that one thing to love. If God had been like men, we would have all been dead in hell. Alone. With no one to cling to. And archeologists of the future would stumble upon grave after grave, lone graves. Not worth noticing. They might label that society as lone-wolf, dod-eat-dog civilization.

Pham Duy, RIP. May you find that cave full of yellow flowers, with lovers (and butterflies) still clinging to each other in life and death beyond.