RE: What Is Love: The Red String of Fate

"An invisible red threat connects those who are destined to meet,
regardless of time, place, or circumstance.
The thread may stretch or tangle,
but it will never break."
- Ancient Chinese Belief

The red string of fate.
An Eastern Asian belief originating from a Chinese and Japanese legend.
According to the Japanese legend/myth, the gods tie this red string of fate around the little finger of two individuals who are to meet someday in their life, hence the use of the word 'fate'.
These two individuals who are connected by the red string are destined lovers, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. In the Western world, we call this 'soulmates'. 


Here is a short story that features the red string of fate as it applies to a young boy:

Walking home one night, a young boy sees an old man standing beneath the moonlight (Yuè Xià Lǎo - the deity in charge of the red string). The man explains to the boy that he is attached to his destined wife by a red thread. Yuè Xià Lǎo shows the boy the young girl who is destined to be his wife. Being young and having no interest in having a wife, the young boy picks up a rock and throws it at the girl, running away. Many years later, when the boy has grown into a young man, his parents arrange a wedding for him. On the night of his wedding, his wife waits for him in their bedroom, with the traditional veil covering her face. Raising it, the man is delighted to find that his wife is one of the great beauties of his village. However, she wears an adornment on her eyebrow. He asks her why she wears it and she responds that when she was a young girl, a boy threw a rock at her that struck her, leaving a scar on her eyebrow. She self-consciously wears the adornment to cover it up. The woman is, in fact, the same young girl connected to the man by the red thread shown to him by Yuè Xià Lǎo back in his childhood, showing that they were connected by the red string of fate.

I believe that everything that happens in people's love lives are always a learning experience that brings them closer to the one they are destined to be with - the one they are connected to through the red string of fate. Every ex brings individuals closer to their soulmate. I may not believe in Yuè Xià Lǎo and the myths, but I guess I can say I believe in fate and in the journey to get there. It applies to my life a lot at the moment.

I hope you all found this as interesting and as intriguing as I did when I first learned about it.
Check out the other posts from the What Is Love series here and don't be afraid to comment!

Minti out!

Reference: 
"Red string of fate." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., n.d. Web. 10 May 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_string_of_fate>.