Who hasn’t experienced the pain and sweetness of unrequited love in their youth?
Re-reading Stefan Zweig’s “Letter from an Unknown Woman” at midnight, I felt differently from when I first read it years ago.
Back then, I was full of fantasies about life, thinking that without love, life would be dull and powerless. But as I grew older, my perspective on things changed. While romantic love is pure and true, reality can be cruel.
Making love the most important thing in life will only lead to disappointment.
When I was young, I was crazy in love, which is normal for young people. But as time goes by, you’ll realize that there’s more to life than love. There are many things more important than love.
In “Letter from an Unknown Woman,” Zweig warns girls not to make love the most important thing in life. Learn to love yourself, because loving yourself is more important than loving others.
The story is about a girl who falls in love with a man, R, at 13. He’s handsome and talented, and she becomes obsessed with him.
If she grew up in a normal family, her feelings might have faded with time. But her mother was too busy with her own life, ignoring her daughter’s feelings, so her love for R became an obsession.
R, a mature and charming man, didn’t leave a deep impression on her. He had many women in his life, but he didn’t know that a young girl was secretly watching him, kissing the door handle he touched, and collecting his cigarette butts.
In her eyes, he was the light of her life, but to him, she was just like air.
When we’re young, we all have romantic dreams, but they often fade with time.
R, however, remained in her heart, a constant presence.
Maybe she just wanted to be loved. As a child, her environment was chaotic, and no one gave her warmth or even talked to her nicely.
So R’s casual greeting left a deep impression on her, becoming the only light in her life.
Later, she followed her mother to another city, where her stepfather provided a comfortable life. Many boys showed interest in her, but her heart remained closed to others.
She kept dreaming of R, even returning to Vienna to see him.
Loving someone isn’t wrong, but love is a two-way street. If there’s no response, is it worth it?
The girl’s world revolved around R, and she lived for him alone.
She was too young to know that all the gifts life gives us come with a price tag.
It’s laughable that when she appeared in front of R, he didn’t even know who she was, treating her like any other woman.
He was still surrounded by many women, never thinking of settling down or taking responsibility. The girl, however, was obsessed.
If she knew how to love herself and understood that love requires mutual feelings, her life wouldn’t have ended in tragedy.
But she was too foolish, making a man the center of her life, and ultimately paying the price.
In reality, a woman in love often loses her intelligence, and having a “love brain” is even more terrifying.
Originally, she was a beautiful girl who might have experienced hardship in her childhood, but as an adult, she had a good life. If she had married a talented young man, it could have been a beautiful story.
But she chose a bumpy road, becoming one of R’s many lovers, having his child, and waiting for him to acknowledge her.
How could this be? In her self-proclaimed love, he only saw her as one of the many women he encountered, and after enjoying himself, he forgot about her.
He didn’t even try to understand her interests or care about her body, quickly losing interest.
R never knew who she was, and all this was just her one-sided behavior.
You can only say that this girl was too foolish, too naive, and too focused on love, ignoring the many beautiful things in life.
But what kind of love is this, anyway? From start to finish, it was all just her one-sided fantasy.
The most ridiculous thing is that she wrote a letter to R before she died, telling him everything that had happened.
What’s the point of that? In R’s mind, she was just a shy, weak girl, and her life and death had no significance.
Things in this world have their own purposes.
Loving someone means wanting a response. If there’s none, you should wake up from your dreams.
Deceiving yourself will only push you towards destruction.
In “Letter from an Unknown Woman,” the girl never complained to R, even until her last moment, calmly telling him the whole story.
From her perspective, she sacrificed everything for love, but from an outsider’s view, she was irresponsible towards life.
There are many things to do in life, and love, although beautiful, is not everything.
If you have love, it’s a bonus, but if not, you can still live a beautiful life. This is the right attitude.
Pining for someone who doesn’t even know who you are, without trying to win their heart through normal interactions, is self-torture.
Living itself is not about being inferior to others, and true love is about being on the same level as the other person.
No matter when, you should know how to love yourself, or you might let your flowers be trampled in the dust.
This kind of love is incorrect and unhealthy. Whether it’s us or our children, we should avoid being biased on the road of emotions.