At the highest peak of the fortress of logic we have erected, we finally confront the most beautiful, chilling, and ultimate final-boss-level paradox: “If my world is already solid enough not to be wounded, and I am entirely whole on my own, why on earth would I willingly brave that heavy liability and cost to welcome an other into my world through ‘love’?”
It is a fiercely perfect contradiction. To a human being who is never lonely even when alone, who reigns as the master of their own narrative and steadfastly steers their own existence, an "other" can never serve as the fulfillment of a deficiency. To the solid ones who manage their own lives flawlessly, love is not a necessity for survival. Why, then, do these whole individuals deliberately step onto the highly perilous ring of love? Unless it is a "thunderbolt of enchantment" that paralyzes rationality by accidentally colliding with another world, do they even need love at all?
To be brutally blunt, they do not need love. And that very "absence of need" is the sole reason their love can become a genuine miracle.
Existential Play and Expansion Beyond the Stage of Survival
A person who is already a whole 100 on their own does not perceive love as a narrative of salvation meant to patch up their missing pieces. To them, love is not a grocery item for survival, but a "hyper-high-difficulty existential adventure" designed to expand the horizons of their cosmos.
A person who is perfect alone can fully satisfy themselves by gazing at the sufficiently beautiful scenery within their private garden. Yet, no matter how solid a 100 one may be, one cannot break through the narrow, first-person prison of the "Ego" by oneself. At this juncture, when confronting another’s universe that is just as solid and unique as one’s own, a human being experiences a gargantuan intellectual and existential curiosity. It is the yearning to witness a second-person world belonging to a dimension never seen before—one that unfolds when that sturdy cosmos and my own collide and fuse. They are not seeking a sanctuary to hide in because they are fragile; rather, it is the affluent play of a giant attempting to march into a wider territory rooted firmly upon their own solidity.
The True Definition of Solidity: The Elasticity to Break
Paradoxically, the individual who is willingly prepared to be wounded and shattered is the most solid human being in this world.
Modern individuals, whose egos are fragile and unstable, harbor an extreme dread that their world will entirely collapse if an other invades their territory even by a fraction of a millimeter. Consequently, they erect higher defense walls, calculate cost-effectiveness, and engage in wrongly addressed debt collection.
On the other hand, a person who has already cast deep, sturdy roots within possesses a fierce, sovereign faith—a psychological elasticity—knowing that even if a part of their world cracks and breaks by colliding with an other, the core orbit of "Me" will never dismantle. Therefore, they alone can summon the genuine courage to demolish their own safe zones for the sake of an other. Precisely because they can restore themselves even if shattered, they can finally bet on the risk.
Love as a Gift, Not a Need
In the end, to a solid person, love is never a "need." Because there is no need, they never degrade the partner into an instrument or a tool to satisfy their own loneliness. This is the exact moment when love ceases to be a theft for fulfillment, and instead transforms into a pure "Gift"—an unconditional sharing of the affluence of one’s own world.
Whether it is a thunderbolt of enchantment that causes the heart to wrenchingly plummet by accidentally colliding with another cosmos, or a conscious choice of will to construct a grander universe by sharing one’s wholeness, the love of the solid ones is never a form of begging; it is the overflow of abundance.
Epilogue: Living as a True Protagonist in a World of Shells
We have walked a long, distant path of thought to finally face the true countenance of love.
From the generation that abandoned love to watch summaries of games they hadn’t even started in the corners of their rooms, to those running while draped in the ready-made symbols of authenticity, to the shrewdness matching specs in the safe hunting ground of the bookstore, and finally to the cheap melodrama of fake protagonists strangling their lovers while wearing the crown of a victim—as we peel away those countless shells one by one, a single, monumental truth remains.
Unless the entity that is "I" first stands solid and upright, every love we engage in is nothing more than a flickering, dopaminergic playing with fire, executed merely to plug a deficiency.
Smash the calculator of cost-effectiveness and step atop the ring. Build the stamina to willingly shatter your own universe to welcome the cosmos of an other. When you—having become so whole that you have absolutely no need for love—nevertheless resolve to grip the hand of another and plunge into the uncharted universe, it is within that luxurious, magnificent narrative of adventure that you will finally become the irreplaceable, true protagonist of your life.
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