The colours of love

I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you Love I love you I love you Love

It makes humans to the greatest and the most foolish things

An inexplicable feeling that can lift you high up into the clouds or bury you deep into the ground

There are infinite songs inspired by a broken heart

Every movie has some kind of love interest

We spend millions of minutes contemplating what may or may not happen

Countless families are based on this funny thing that we call love

It has endless different meanings for everyone, which made us embark on a quest around the world to discover how love is expressed and what it represents in different cultures and societies

People from dozens of countries are now giving you their perspective of the multiple colors that love can take

Whenever we come into the essence of what it means to be a human being, love comes in

Love is the most important energy of all the universe

Love is like being with someone that you can't imagine being without

I feel that love is this energy that bonds everything together between people, between animals, between plants or between the whole planet

Love is actually a mixture of sadness, efforts and sacrifice

In Urdu we say, it means like we do not do love, it happens

Love is not only between the gods and boys but all over the world

You care about that person, you just don't say the word love love love again, but you feel it and you mean it

You basically care more about this person than about yourself

Love is a choice, it's not a feeling

I found love everywhere because I love myself

Can change my life, can change the economies, can change the world, can change everything

Doesn't matter if you feel it with like with your family or with a partner, but it's the feeling that I want to feel every day

The first that comes in my mind is the opposite of hate

And it's love is opening up, right, rather than shutting down

I think it's a universal energy, you must feel it from inside of you

Love is a very important thing between two or more people that when they meet, they share this sorrow, happiness, joy, and they are ready to help each other

That's why in there it's called love

We were both completely drunk

We both came from another party and we met at four o'clock in the morning and we looked into each other's eyes and made boom, and we just knew, okay, this is it

Then she quit her five-year relationship and she also had three other lovers and she quit that

After five weeks we moved together in my little one and a half room flat and that was 17 years ago

The last day that I was in Kathmandu I couldn't just get on a plane without seeing her and she didn't want to come to take us to the airplane because she said she would be afraid that she would cry if she would see us leave

So I just went to the reception there to the gym to see her face one more time and it was kind of awkward

I said like, hi, yeah, I'm going down

And she was kind of like, almost shocked to see me like, oh, hey, hi, because she didn't expect to see me again

And then I left and we got to the airport and it was very strange because as soon as we lifted off I started feeling this very big loss

I was looking through the airplane window and I saw Kathmandu getting smaller and smaller and I saw her sort of getting smaller and smaller and disappearing almost

So that's actually the exact moment that I realized how much it really meant to me

And then when I got home I found this very long email in my inbox where she told me that not long after I left the gym she actually, without saying anything, she just ran from her office post

She got into a taxi and she was driving to the airport to try and catch up with me

But we already had passed the customs at that point, you know

So we sort of had that moment at the same time, that realization that you can't really choose love, you know

You can't say, okay, I'm not going to love this person, I'm not going to fall in love with this person, let's just be friends

If there's much more than that, it's something you can't deny

So we had a very long distance, we had this long distance relationship, lots of emails, lots of phone calls

At one point we just had to conclude, like, we need to do something with this, otherwise we're going to end up unhappy

So that's how we decided to get married

And so in 2002 we got married here in Nepal

Like everybody said, my late husband is not a romantic kind of man

People would say like very Chinese-oriented and very Chinese-minded

But with our relationship, he changed for better for me and I changed for him also

So this kind of love that brings out the best, I have it for 22 years of my marriage

When we celebrated our 17th anniversary, he just came up with the idea, given me like 17 cards every day since the day our anniversary, first card, second card on the 17th card

And then every day I got 17 gifts

Can you believe that? Who did that? I checked out with my friend and nobody received that

My love story with Sasmita began a few years back when I was living in Melbourne

I was sent her picture in email by my relatives

They wanted to arrange my marriage with her and when I first saw her picture, I thought, this looks like a boring girl

I don't know if I want to marry her

But then there's another side of me that was a bit curious

And then I did a bit of research on Facebook, intensive research

I found her Facebook profile, I added her

And then we became friends on Facebook and we started chatting every day

She had no clue whatsoever that our marriage was being arranged

So for nearly three years, I was chatting with her

I became her friend

And then finally one day she came to know that our relatives were trying to get us married

And then I came back to Nepal from Melbourne because my dad was very sick and everyone was trying to get me married before anything happened to him

We first decided to meet in a cafe

I had been chatting with her for so long, but I had never ever seen her in person

So it was pretty scary experience for me

I waited in the cafe for her

Then it was very, I was very anxious

Like I was, my body language, I was doing this and then I was looking at the entrance and then every time a pretty girl came inside, I was like, oh, is that her? Oh no, that's not her

And then finally she came

She had a lot of makeup on

Obviously she was prepared to impress me

Then we sat down in the cafe, ordered pizza

For nearly two hours, we didn't speak much

I was nervous and so was her and we didn't talk much and we were just eating

And finally after two hours, we started to chat

The first thing she asked me was whether I was being forced to marry, whether it was my decision that I want to marry or not

It was kind of, there was a bit of pressure on me, but still when I saw her, I knew that this was the girl I wanted to be with the rest of my life

So I told her, no, I'm, I'm not being pressurized

I really want to, I think I want to marry you

Then came the next meeting, which was in Garden of Dreams

So that day we were a bit more open to each other

We took lots of pictures because I'm a photographer

I took my camera with me and I spend most of my time taking pictures of us and I still have those pictures

And whenever I look at them, I feel very good

We were both good looking back then

So finally the day of our wedding came because I'm a Hindu

We have a long rituals

My dad also participated

He was very sick, but he got very excited to be the part of the wedding and the rituals, it went on for four days and we're not allowed to have salt also

Anyways, so after the wedding, she came home

We started living our life

2017, our little daughter Mayra was born

Throughout all these ups and downs, she got frustrated many times, but she never left me and we went through it all

Marriage, the first time I remember, I was proud to honor the education that we have, that we must create a family

When I announced to my father how I would like to marry him, he was happy

I know that he can be happy

I think that was a regular thing that I can put one foot in the society

But after one year, one year and a half, love was still good, but the work of the brain, you know, start to communicate the wrong things

And to be always with the same person, sleep in the same bed, eat in the same time, was eating all time

I was just thinking, what will be in another time without her? What I can do without her? What she can do without me? You know, probably we was prisoners of ourselves

My mom, she's now like 72

My dad is 82 and he married two sisters

So I come from a polygamous family and it worked for them

Actually, my mom, my mom got married first and her sister, who was her follower, she was 15 years old

And I think in some ways my mom preferred that my dad marries her sister, they stay well together, they can even share a house, than getting another person from somewhere that maybe they might not be able to live together well

I actually didn't know who was my mom and who was not my mom, who were my mom's kids and who were my sister's mom's kids until when I was like around 13 years

That's when you could know that you were the last born of this mom and the first born is this and second born, blah, blah, blah

So it took, it took us time

We never saw them fighting

We never saw them fighting over anything

I don't know how they managed, but it worked for them and it worked for even other families

But I don't think it can work now because we are in a society whereby you can even kill your sibling if she cheats with your husband

So we actually met on Tinder

That's the first thing what we say because some people would not really say that we met online and it was almost two years ago that we met and it started pretty amazing and it's still pretty amazing

Things got very fast

So I actually suggested going out on the 1st of May on Patrine, which is very symbolic

And from there it just went straight to this point where we were immediately in relationship

We fell for each other and it just felt very natural even though it was kind of fast

I was really confused and I just put myself into one category, but now I'm happy to say that for me love is everywhere

I could love any kind of person

That's why I consider myself as bisexual

We became friends and I think we mistook the friendship for something else and that's about it

I really don't feel this much passion towards it

I see it as a big lesson in my life because I had all these expectations that I wanted to get married instead of falling in love and then seeing what might happen

So this is part of my learning process

I think this is why at this point I'm in my love story with myself

I am open

I wish to have a partner, but I also don't want to do something as silly as marrying somebody I'm not in love with

For me right now, I feel the kids are a little older and there's more space and I start to value the time we have and we start to reconnect more romantically, let's say

But at the same time, there was times when all you think about is like, my God, what's keeping us together? Why aren't we divorced? And then a couple years passed and you're like, God, thank you for this

And then you're like, God, thank God those dark times didn't get the best of us

So is that love? I don't know

It's just like day to day, you know

My mom arranged her for me

Far away, about 350 kilometers far away from here

She lives there, but her parents, like my mother-in-law, my mom knows

So she goes there and then she says, okay, I have my son

So please, I want your daughter for my son

So my mother-in-law says, okay, I will come to your home and I see your son

Then she came here with her sisters

Then she showed me and I show her Taj Mahal as well

She told my mom, okay, I will give you my daughter for your son

I think in Nepal, once the girls start having the age of like 17, 18, it's the kind of that is a marriageable age

The parents start like, you know, giving you all the photographs and then people start taking interest on the girls or even to the boys like, hey, I have this suitable guy or girl you have

So I start having that also for my parents, but all the time I was saying like, no, I don't want to get married

I don't want to get married

First, let me finish my study and this thing

So when I fell in love with my first love, you know, my parents was, especially my dad was really, really angry

So I told them that, okay, if you don't permit, okay, I'll stay like, I will remain unmarried for the rest of my life, you know, so can you handle that? A lot of people say that love is feeling

I don't really agree with that because feeling you can fit, you know, the feeling can go when you love someone because, oh, it's so beautiful

He's, oh, he's so macho, you know, wow, it's incredible, but that's only feeling

But when you decide to love someone

Because like feelings die down, but like, if you want to be with that person for a lifetime, you have to choose to love that person over and over again, regardless of everything

Because if you don't kiss it, the feelings just like, oh, today you're like, oh, but like the next day it'd be like, just want to kill that person or it fades away

Yeah

So like you have to choose to love the person like intentionally in spite of everything you learn to love and you learn to you learn to love and you learn to understand the other person

But I think it's kind of forcing yourself because you don't have another option

Nowadays, I feel like arranged marriage is much better than love marriages

Because there is a family involved in love marriages, there is no family

Simple as that

Nothing else

Because marriage is a lifetime commitment

So you should be, you should be free to marry whoever you feel like this is the person that I want to marry

I cannot exactly say about the arranged marriage, but if the person who understands love for him, arranged marriage or love marriage does not matter because he's made for love and he'll love any person who comes in his life

It is pretty tricky because there are expectations from your family that you marry to someone from your own community

But then you can't help falling in love with someone

When you're in love, you're in love

In some countries, it's still common

And sometimes we are making jokes with my friend that if we won't find someone, we're going to ask our parents to arrange something like that for us

I can't really like, because I'm so far away of this kind of situation

Like my parents, that would be so awkward if my parents would be like, here, this guy, what do you think? I would trust them, but I would trust them for the same reasons they would never do it

With family, it's like in our blood

It's already given by the God

You cannot make it

You cannot destroy it with the family, especially your parents and kids and kids like your siblings

So for those, it's like eternal

It's like already loaded in our genes

I have a strong love, very strong love to my family and a very strong love that is different from my strong love to my husband, because he's the person that I'm going to stay together with

But my family will always be there for me

If something happens between me and my husband, I will always go back to my family

So the love that I have for my family is quite huge

Then the one I have for my husband, your family always give you support and stay behind

If we do something wrong, our family, first thing he tell us, no, do not do that

This family is very important

That's our religious

Tell us the love is very important

Your family is very important

Also, more friend you have, more love you have

Yes

And the love for the mother, you cannot compare with any love that is the mother and the father, because they brought you in this world and you didn't know anything

And they are the ones who taught you how to love one another

Yes

Well, I am a son of a single mother

So I think that has a big influence on how I express love

Because, you know, I basically only had the the women, feminine figure to show me how to do it

But I think if someone loves you 10% of what your mother loves you, that is love

The, you know, you have an instinctual love for your mother

You take for granted a lot of what love is, I think, you know, throughout your life

You just know you're connected, let's say to your mother and everybody to whatever you have

I mean, that feels beyond explanation, which for me would be a mother love type thing

And then to have the boys in a way, it's that same kind of eternal instinct that takes away thought from love

It doesn't, there's no question

There's like a, I would die, you know, and I'm not saying that kids don't think, oh, I'll die for my mother

So it's even beyond that, you know, when you know that when you know that you'll give your life up in a heartbeat for your child, that's something that you've most people have never experienced before, at least I haven't

And so for me, what else is love, you know, when it reaches that level where you would give your life in a heartbeat and you know it, you wouldn't have to think you would do it

So my dad died and we we grew up with our mom and well, our mom did well

So even if she didn't manage to educate me, but I really give her credit because she fought so much to raise us

That's why I always say I'm a son of a woman

Yeah

And I respect women better than anything

My belief is if there is no woman, you can't be who you are

Because my parents didn't love each other

And all the, my mom always told me that the only like people she loves is me, my brother and like her parents

And that's it

And she never loved anybody else

So for me, like the love was only the feeling that I kind of got from her

For a long time, I had this idea that like, I probably will be with someone for stability and not for long

Yeah

But then I met Tomas and it kind of changed

From the very beginning, I immediately realized that like, no, that's like, it's not the same feeling

I must say that I grew up in a family only with my mom, because my mom and my dad, they did not really spend much time together

But even though it was a bit rough in the beginning, I still grew up with my siblings and with my grandparents in the same house

So I guess I was surrounded with all types of love, like love, hate, love, respect, and love, need

And I think it just really taught me to love, no matter how different or far the person is

I come from a very loving family where I've always been shown, I mean, the example of caring for each other, of enjoying time together, giving each other independence

I think that's a healthy love, giving each other space, trusting each other

But being there, being very close, I mean, being Colombian, like we're always hugging and kissing and like touching, like my mom is always like, oh, I miss them

So that's like my first love story

And it still continues, thankfully

And we cannot think like you guys do or she do

We think, how can we satisfy our brothers or our parents? We think of them more than ourselves

So it's been very difficult for me to manage all those things

Yeah, maybe in that way, my parents influenced me since I see this like really nice relationship that they have

And maybe I see how my dad is to my mom, and that makes me look for, you know, that type of person and my partner

I didn't make a family in one way, because one soldier cannot take more than seven kilos in the front line

And one child is important to be with him

I don't want to be too much human

I want to think that I'm, like everybody, extraterrestrial

So from my background, I had a really, really terrible childhood

And so my mother was an alcoholic, and I was basically alone since I was three years old

And I, you know, I got myself out of the deepest shit, basically, and I know how

And I know how powerful meditation and positive neuroscience and psychology is

You know, we all have, you know, our package, which we carry from our parents, where they have lived, how they have been happy or unhappy

And we have kind of like developed a reaction towards that

Also, how we experienced our original family, how stable our relation to our parents have been

And in most cases, in our Western cultures, this stable base is not there for most people

And so we have, we develop fears of intimacy

We develop all kinds of obstacles

And you need to become aware how these kind of patterns you have developed are influencing the partner you choose, how it influences, you know, like how you are in relationships

And it influences how happy you become

Their parents influenced them, and their parents influenced them, and voila, I've been lucky that I have mother and father

I know people who don't have that

I think the older I am, the more I realize how foolish a person can be sometimes, how ungrateful because it's easy to block yourself, to have this armor around you and call your parents, okay, that's their fault, you know, or it's her fault, you know, the way I am

But first of all, you got to start with yourself first, right, inside of you and to forgive yourself first for feeling this way

That's the way it is

And I love my parents for what they've given me

And maybe sometimes we don't show them enough

But that's a good reminder, actually, right now

I think my parents taught me everything about life and not in a very orthodox way, let's say

So my parents are very dysfunctional

And I think like every parent are, because parents are just kids like us

But now they have kids to take care of

So my mom was very young

She was 16

And I was her second child

So she has no structure to really deal with kids because she was a kid herself at that age

So she taught me a lot about what life really means when you're suffering and being able to see through other people's eyes

My father was a very harsh man

He had a lot of issues growing up and he got blind after 22 in a mistake in a surgery

So he also was a very, he had a very heavy heart

And I was a child and he did not know also how to take care of a child

So it was a quite interesting childhood

And he taught him a lot about forgiveness, I guess, in a, not in a talking way, but in a later life when I learned how to forgive him, because I thought that I could never forgive him for who he was until I really see who he was for reality and really accept that he's just a man

He's just a boy

He's just a guy

And he's, there's no guilt

There's no blame

There's no evil

Like me, I can say the love I have for God is stronger than every other love that exists

I have my qualification for men that he needs to fear God

He needs to be honest, because if you fear God, then you always put like the right priority in your life

Like you will put God first, then your wife, then your children, then after that, your work

I think that's very fundamental in Mary

There is no, actually, there is no religious impact on love

Love is else

Love is completely different

Love is only love

There is no religion kind of like him

I love my religion so much and for me that if somebody loves me and I want him truly love what I like

The universal message of Islam is love humans, love all the humans

When I practice that, when I felt like, can I forgive this person who has done this thing with me? Then it was like Prophet had said, say to that person, I forgive you just for Allah

And when I said that something to person, it was a different feeling

It was, I cannot do it if I was not in love with Allah or God

And due to that love, it's a bond with the humans

I think a lot of people seek religion to seek love, actually

And I do feel that some people can really find that

Like you see the love and passion that Muslims have and how much they practice and how much love and effort they put in that

So I do feel there's a lot of love involved in that

You see the Thai culture is such a giving culture, a loving, open-hearted culture

And it's linked to Buddhism and even Christians

You see a lot of love and compassion in them

And sometimes they actually find this through their religion because this is the only path that they can find it

Sometimes they try in many other places, but they cannot reach love

The Buddhists not teach about love

They just teach like, if you do something good for someone, you will get something, some good back

You give what you get, you get what you give

I believe in a path of endless connectedness

I believe there's something greater than us

Okay, this is going to sound very strange, but in Star Wars you have the force

Well, I believe it's something like that

If people would talk about God, then that is God for me

It is a feeling, it is an atmosphere

And you have to feel it, you have to be in touch with it, and then you have to grab it

When everything came on my path, when I moved to Uganda, I got two job offers

I got my girlfriend there, my biggest happiness

For me, that I got those two job offers when I was looking at them, that for me, that was the work of that atmosphere, that kind of God in that way

There is a way that prayer can help in a situation whereby things are not working out when it comes to relationship

Like you can pray

I pray for my relationship, I pray for my husband, I pray for my family

And when we have moments of difficulties, it works with prayers

God, I know you're there

Please have such and such a challenge

Please help me

So which means God is there and things work out as well

The love that I give out to God is very different from the love that I give out to my fellow friend

Yeah, because sometimes I can only trust God, because I know God cannot tell someone what I've told him

He only tells me

Religious people, they always have a therapist with them, which is God

So they both believe very strongly

They both put a lot of intention into it

Actually, I'm not a religious person

I was born in a Hindu family, but I'm not a Hindu

I mean, culturally, I'm a Hindu, but philosophically, I'm like an atheist

In India, religion plays a most important role in everyone's life, and we are still struggling with that

So maybe in the future, we'll get some hope

But as of now, I don't see that a same-gender couple can be considered here

Religion divides a human

Religion is the reassociation of criminality

Love is God himself

If you must give a name to God, I think that the name of God is love

And his energy is the most important

I love myself, but I also hate myself

It's not so easy

Well, usually I wake up and I think I'm amazing

Let's get that straight

But no, sometimes you act not according to your beliefs or moral compass because of something, maybe external factors, or I don't know

It depends

But then if you're the only one responsible for that, then you are angry at yourself

So I'm just trying to be a better version of myself every day

So when I fail, I'm disappointed

Sometimes, especially for women, it can be a bit difficult to love yourself because of the advertisement and all the things that we are supposed to be because we are supposed to be the perfect mother, the perfect student

But at the same time, we have to be funny

We have to be all the time happy

And really, we are human and it's not possible to every one of us

And this is why sometimes very women can feel bad

But I think that we have to understand that this is a prototype and we don't have to follow this all the time because we are human

Above just women or something or some ideal you need to follow

Everybody says to me, like, I love the skin

I love that

It makes me think, oh, this is the way, this is what I want

And now I love to look at the mirror

I started to take care of myself

That was the first step and starting to accepting myself

And in that also stop judging myself and what I'm doing

I'm think about why I love him, but I don't love myself

And then I have to do anything for myself

I broke up with him and I'm do anything for make my life is better

I think I've accepted it

I love men because I have accepted myself

Till the time you don't love yourself, you can't accept anything

I loved myself more than anyone

After my mother, I loved myself

And that's why I think it's okay for me to be in a relationship with a man

Because at the end, it's me who need to be happy in life

A tribe called Shipibo in the north jungle of Pukalpa because I was struggling with addictions and I wanted to get sober

Clean myself from all the shit I've been doing for the last couple of years in this concrete jungle

And I did that, you know, and I found I found gratitude

I found certain joy

I found playfulness again within myself

But also I found a lot of darkness

I found something that I had to face with that I've been afraid to meet your demons

If I remember at those times where I was feeling really, really, really low and I found this stream of love inside of me, I felt happy

I liberated myself, you know, from from the past

It's giving me something that I can always lean on, always be there for myself, which I didn't know, which I never knew I could be there for myself, you know, the way how I experienced back in the jungle

I think growing up in this society, I think we learn in some fucked up way to not love ourselves

We learn that that person is better, that person that do this better

And it's a constant input for you to not love yourself

This is why I think in our society, it's really rare to hear about self love and you see a lot of people hating themselves

And that was also not different for me

I also had a lot of issues of loving myself

For many reasons, for not accepting my physical appearance or my mistakes or my flaws, I could never understand why I had so much hate towards myself as well, because that's not natural

That's not something that should really happen, right? You are the one that you have to live with for the rest of your life

And if you hate yourself, how can you live with yourself? You know, so then I started going deep into it

And then I found that I had a lot of judgment about myself and like not very good ones

I was not good enough

I was not handsome enough

I was not cool enough

I was not nice enough

And I did not do good enough

But then after a while, I start going even deeper into it and seeing who I really am and what really matters, because most of the things that I was judging myself for, it doesn't really matter at the end of the day

It matters your heart

Like this is me

This is my physical appearance

This is my intellectual

This is my mind

And this is my beliefs

And this is this is me

And I was not good enough

I was not good beliefs

And this is this is me

And as soon as I had this radical acceptance of everything that I am, I started slowly changing things that I thought that I could improve

And things just start improving itself or of some effort

But just after I really accepted who I was, who I am right now

And that was a love story that started with a lot of hate and then slowly became into friendship and now became unconditional love

I left my goals aside

I left a lot of who I was aside to support what he was doing

And of course, I moved to another country where I had to learn the language and that put me in a different position

And we we thought it would be easier

But it wasn't about my career and about my things

But it was this thing that I had to lose my freedom completely

The things that happened in the relationship were not my conscious choice

I got into it, but it wasn't like I want to not have a career

I want to be in a position where I don't speak the language and I'm struggling

You are constant content, constant contact with people here

Even though you are staying in a house, you hear like dog barking, you hear like people

So you feel safe, you know

But when you are in Europe or in America, you don't hear anyone

So you feel like you are unknown, you know

And that kind of lonely list was really, really hard for me

So I think that was the things I sacrificed

I think that in life, sometimes you need to sacrifice many things for love

And I think that if I really feel a strong love with someone, because I think that you really know when this person is really special for you

I think I will do really crazy things

I will move to Australia, to United States

I don't know

I will move to anywhere

I will get my job

I will do many, many things if I know that this is the person that I want to be with

Because I think that love is the strongest feeling you can have in your life

So you have to sacrifice

I think it's worth it

What I do sacrifice to have my girlfriend here, my life here and my job, are definitely my family and my friends back home

And that is that is a trade-off

And that can be quite painful at moments

Yeah

I'll sacrifice myself

Yeah

My music is like I'm married to my music before being married to anyone else

So it's me

Anyone that I welcome, that I introduce to my life, they also have a little piece of me

For example, if you like to have some dress or some makeup and this guy don't want that you have some dress or some makeup, you don't have to sacrifice some little things because it's little, little, little

But after it's become a big thing and at the end it's not you

So you don't have to sacrifice anything for love

But if I think about family, I think that you can sometimes sacrifice something

Because I sacrifice, I think, some things for my family because my family is really important for me

So we have to take care of each other

So when I was working, my plan was to educate my brother

So the money I could work for, I could pay it for my brother's school fees because I didn't want him to be like me

I really sacrificed a lot

But to me, what I did, I did it because I meant it

I decided to do it

Yes

My wife, she's loved for me and she has sacrificed a lot

But, well, we are still struggling to meet our ends and make a living and pay our debt

But still she never complains

I know that I haven't been able to buy her expensive gifts or take her to the movies, take her to cafe

We are content with whatever little we have

So I feel like love has sacrificed for me rather than me sacrificing for the love

Maybe I would just say that with the LGBTQ community, it could be very often that you have to sacrifice something

For instance, I had to sacrifice kind of relationship with my dad because he did not accept it as well

But generally, I don't think I ever sacrifice something

And not in that way that I would really lose it and I wanted it back

For me, it was always this thing to go for

For me, I guess the family thing as well, because only my mother and my brother know

But I don't want to hide it and I don't want to be dirty and coming home and still be like, I don't have a girlfriend

I don't know

It's such a bullshit

So like, it's their decision to accept it or not

But if they don't, it will be definitely like a sacrifice for myself, for my relationship with Palash

In our culture, it's like a payment when you get a girl from one family

When it comes to payment of dowry for us, we do like you can pay with the livestock, cows, ships and all that, or you can pay money

For my husband, he has not done it because he's like buying me from my family, which he says it's terrible

But then I've sacrificed to be with him even without payment of this because I love him, because I feel good staying with him

Yes, he's Italian

Just yesterday, I was talking with a guy at my work and he was telling us this and he was like, you know, we pay the dowry because then we own them

And just like so easily, you know, like the word owning was like there, you know, and that for me, it's a big kind of like a whole contradiction of how I perceive love

I feel sad to my family because they want to have a son

I'm lucky because my dad, they are not so, they have open mind, they can understand something easy

If he wants to know something, he will ask

I did cut any kind of contact with my real dad, with my Belgian dad

He was a very toxic figure for me, so I had to make that decision when I was 13

And I'm sure that in a way he did love me, but this was just very different than from my other family side in which I was very open

So I did sacrifice that for my own form of happiness

I must say that I'm a really happy man because I live a really simple life

Wow, I don't think that there is something concrete that makes you feel happy, makes you, makes me feel happy, but I think that finally you are happy when you wake up in the morning and you have peace in your mind

When I have my own kids with the person I'm married to right now, that will be complete for me

I don't think I'll need anything else

Like loving someone and having this sense of home brings this state of happiness

For me, definition of happiness is if you make some other person happy

I think we are taught different ideas of what love is and different ideas of what happiness is, because happiness can be very like socially imposed on us

Yeah, like if you're married and you have children, that means you're happy

But also I feel like my generation of women, we've been told about freedom and like freedom makes happiness

And yes, you want a partner, but you need a career and you need all these things

I still look for the way how I can make my family happy

And I don't show them, of course, they always think I'm happy, but to me, they are innocent

They don't know

Yeah

I'm okay

They know I'm happy, but to me personally, I'm not happy

Actually, I pretend to show them that I'm happy with them, but I'm not

You know, a lot of people mix joy with happiness

And they think this kind of feeling of joy and good feelings is what happiness is, is that you're absolutely 100% okay with who you are, what you're doing and how your surrounding is, even when your surrounding is difficult

That's the key of happiness, that you're not attached to the outside, because most people are only happy when their outside is positive, and they are unhappy when the outside is negative

And for me, happiness is that your mind is so independent and so free that you can be in the worst circumstances

In the morning, early morning, to watch the early morning and tell thanks, I send my love to all planet, to all universe, to everybody that I don't know

Love is like a drug, you know, it's amplifier of feelings

If you're in love and you're happy, you are, you're in ecstasy of happiness

It's like you feel like you're cuddled by clouds, you know, floating over the world, just with this special person

No one else exists, you're just stuck in the universe together

But if you're in love and you're sad, you're devastated

It's, it's, you know, you want to be happy, you want to be happy, you want to be happy, you want to be happy, it's, it's, you know, you want to cut out your heart and throw it away because you don't need it anymore, so

Before I found somebody, that means you, that I had a very intimate relationship with, that I could share this, so even before I met Vlad, I think that I had amazing group of friends and a purpose that I was really proud of, but still something was missing

Like, let's say that all day I was happy, but then during the night I felt kind of sad that one part of the puzzle is still missing for me

So I don't think that happiness is always connected to love, but in my case, it like was connected to love because it was the missing piece

Love is everywhere

In our dreams, in our hopes, in the good memories as in the bad ones

Waking up every morning feeling loved brings a tranquility of being

Love is timelessness when it unites two lucky souls for eternity

Life can slowly separate people who love each other

Even if the sea erases on the sand the footprints of broken love, there will forever be a mark in each of them of the passage of love

We are surrounded by love in countless ways, yet societies point out what divides the world

Whether you're atheist or Jewish, gay or transsexual, whether you're rich or poor, a single mom or a CEO, from Maasai Mara to China, we always look for the differences

We have to stop looking for what divides us and keep searching for what unites the world

Love

I love you