My trip finally came to an end.  When I drove off the island, a tinge of sadness pinched my heart.  I didn’t expect to learn a lesson of business on the mellow island.  I didn’t expect to be touched by passion and resolve of its residents.  Life is good at Key West.  Life is unpredictable at Key West.

I didn't expect to run into her and didn't expect to see her fresh, smooth face now tainted by seasons and age.  The last time I saw her was in the U.S.  She was then young, shy and charming, but two years later she is now old, drunk and listless.  Since I last saw her, she has moved from Seattle to Miami, for his ex.  But they broke up a year ago. 

Hearing the news, I was happy for her.  Their stories were widely distributed.  A pretentious, selfish and unscrupulous boyfriend slept around, and claimed it was his right to be promiscuous.  When the girl had her one night stand, it became such a violation of the ethical code that the man had to broadcast to the entire world and hunt down the other man and shame him and the girl into guilt for hurting a relationship of 15 years.  What a jerk!  Thank goodness ... it is all over.  Now she can begin her new life.

But her next comment astounded me, “I still want to be back with him.”  “What on earth are you thinking?”  “I am not as cold and heartless as you are.  It was 15 years of relationship!”

Yes, it was 15 years of relationship, but unhealthy, torturous and painful ones.  Yet she wants it again, just like the first person I dated last year, who couldn't break free from three years of distrust and hurt, just as a banker friend, whose career was ruined and life threatened by a young dancer, but still desiring her.  What's up with my dear Chinese friends who keep treating themselves as sacrifices and feed their souls and bodies to the jaws of “sadists?”

The tragedy is so prevalent that I've inadvertently been involved with two “masochists” in the last year.  Some first hand data are worth pondering.  What are the reasons for the self destructive behavior?  The common ones are:

1. “I am still in love.”   What kinds of love?  Is it lust for beauty or machismo?  Is it admiration for maturity, experience or wealth?  Is it respect for characters?  Or is it what psychologist calls “loss aversion” --- when we cannot have something, its attraction to us suddenly explodes to 100 folds of its intrinsic value, though that “something” hasn't changed a bit.  Or is it our hard wire that makes us react more positively to familiar things, though most of them are not optimal choices (another piece of proven psychology).  Or is it the “sunk cost” that we desire to recoup---I've invested 3 years, there has to be a good result?  We all love for different reasons, but we rarely ask why we love.  Maybe we should ask more, because some love is real, others are not.  Some is worthy, others are not.

2. “It is my fate.”  It is your fate, when you choose it to be.  Fate is the best excuse to avoid difficult choices.  Fate is designed for the weak to reach internal peace.  Fate is the term predators use to make you his prey.  Can I say it out and clear: it is not fate, it is your choice!

3. “I need an answer.”  Why didn't he treat me well?  What did I do wrong?  Human need answers.  We couldn't figure out the world, so we created religion.  With that, satisfaction was reached.  But see how true religion is.  To figure out the answers for the broken relationship, one needs the maturity and honesty from the other side.  Those are rare qualities in a man or woman.  Maybe the facts that the relationship is not working are enough, maybe his/her coldness and lies are enough.  It is time to quit wondering and move on. 

4. “I need closure.”  Closures (how we felt about each other before, where we stand now and what we should do going forward) are important for any significant relationships that come to an end.  We are responsible for giving them and we deserve receiving them.  But not everyone follows this rule.  Those bustards who don't give us closure leave us hanging.  The desire for settlement brings us back to them again and again.  Are we too dependent?  And worse, are we too dependent on the wrong people?

I am no advocate for unadulterated rationality in a loving relationship.  On the contrary, please put your heart into it, be emotional, be devoted and be powerless.  But when time of evaluation comes, a mature person chooses to see things in their true colors.  Hard choices are to be made.  We need a methodology to help us defend ourselves from our own weaknesses.  A renowned psychologist recommended the following approach:

Ask yourself the question:

Given what you know about the person now, assuming it is the first time you two met, will you still choose to be with him or her? If the answer is no, move on!

I am sure if my banker friend consciously asks himself this question, knowing that the dancer will threaten his life, he will not choose to be with her.  I am sure if my friend from America asks the question, knowing that she will age 10 times faster under the bully of his ex, she will move on.  The right companion is probably the most important choice one can make in life.  I hope all my friends make that choice carefully.  Pick someone you can build a fulfilling and unregrettable future with.

Maybe I don't know love.  Maybe love should be filled with torture, pain and suspicion.  If you believe that, a true masochist you are.  And a weak soul is no good for me.

My dragon lady mom decided that her 31 year old son and 29 year old daughter do not yet have places to live (renting is far from owning in her mind) and it is her responsibility to fill in the gap.  Hence, our family was immediately rallied around the idea of property ownership and an apartment in a location she has longed for was purchased within 10 days.   Mom proves again to be the soul of the household.

A good beginning is only half of the success or a third of the trouble.  I thought it would be fun to spend a day on furniture shopping with my good old parents, but our tastes are so widely apart that family drama resulted from it. 

Mom and dad spent the whole day looking at redwood furniture （红木家具）.  I was half asleep during most the conversation with the sales agents.  Then, suddenly, I woke up, because the horrifying thought of living in the redwood filled apartment is utterly intolerable.  Matters need to be taken with my own hands.  I started scouting around for modern design and forcefully rejecting the selection of my dear parents.  They were unexpectedly cooperative to my requests in the beginning and let me proudly make my case with minimal gesture of approval or disapproval. 

A leather sofa set caught my eyes.  It is absolutely gorgeous, the Gucci of sofa, classy, modern, yet not flamboyant.    Mom and dad looked at this sofa, checked out the exorbitant price and compared it with the traditional set adjacent.  They shook their heads and left.  That became the turning point of the day.  My taste was obviously leading the family to the wrong direction.  We went back to wood chasing. 

I didn't give up.  At the end of the trip, I insisted on showing them my ideal style.  We went to another mall and went straight to the floor carrying modern design.  After I presented the wall of lovely bookshelves, dad commented, “they look like the cheapest shelves we used in the office for documents keeping.”  Mom followed, “it is a 500RMB bookshelf with a 10000 RMB price tag.  How can my young, up-and-coming, executive-to-be son use this?  It is absolutely no taste at all.”  I was speechless.  The modern simplistic design is a symbol for low quality, poor taste and robbery in my parents' mind.  At the same time, the long history of redwood means discomfort, lack of utility and old fashion to me.

Redwood furniture means a lot to the elder.  It's the furniture that shows class and can be passed on to generations of descendents.  It is a recognized brand in their mind (my business education cannot help but chime in :-) ).  Every shop which sells wood furniture has “redwood” in their names and we therefore didn't miss any.  But none of them have real redwood furniture.  Redwood is mostly replaced by imported African wood.  Despite that, scores of 50-60 year olds frequent these shops. 

Redwood furniture has zero, if not negative, connotation to me, because it failed to tailor to the taste of the young and its longevity advantage over other material diminished due to improvement in material science.  Plus, I don't care so much about passing my belongings to my children.  Their ideas of trendiness will go far beyond my imagination.  In a society that value less and less material itself, but more and more concepts, design and abstraction, I admit my incompetence to predict what's hot in 20 years.

Our shopping trip apparently shocked my parents more than me.  Mom called and cried this morning.  She was concerned that her son has become this vulgarly tasted man, who didn't inherit the decency from his parents.  But deep down, I can only guess, what worried her more is not my taste, it is my difference.  After all, she grew up in the world of Jing De Zhen（景德镇）, Si Lian Haircut（四联理发） and Jin Yang Fan Zhuang（晋阳饭庄）.  Her son chases iPod, Prada and Dong Tian Style.  How well does she know her own son?   How well does her son know her?  To a loving mother, those are difficult questions to confront.

I can't help but ask, can this be an opportunity that the mother truly learns about the son and the son truly about the mother?  Can our relationship be more solid and less illusional after this project?  My dragon mom is no ordinary.  After hearing these questions, mom picked herself up.  Tears wiped, she immediately, and fearlessly, jumped into the heated discussion with her son on the best way to decorate the apartment.