What is true love

Thousands of people cried in a concert and reflected their lives and their loves at the same time. This is the magic of the song“Someone like you.” 

On October 26, 2011, Adele held her concert in Royal Albert Hall and sang this song at the end of the show. Before she sang the song, she told the story between her and her last boyfriend and said, “We were so intense I thought we would get married. But that was something he never wanted. It was just the horrible-est feeling ever. But after I wrote it, I felt more at peace. It set me free.” Then, Adele started to sing the song without a flashy dance or ornate stage, just her voice with the piano. There were tears in her eyes, but she tried to keep her voice from choking. The audience sang the chorus with her, and many people cried because of her emotional voice. It is more of a story than a song, but the ironic part of this story was that she said she would find someone else, but she just wanted to find someone like him. At the end of the song, All the audience stood up clapped and cheered for her for more than 30seconds.

From the perspective of rhetoric, what the audience and I did can be seen as pathos, which means the emotional connection with the audience. I think all the audience stood up clapped and cried not only for Adele’s story but also for themselves. Every audience memorized their past loves. They might think deeply what is the true love? Was it a way of understanding what unconditional love is or was it a extreme missing? For myself, the true meaning of love has changed in my past 20years. The first time I heard this song, I just broken up with my girlfriend, who was also my first love. I couldn’t sleep for the whole night, and I went to the school playground at 1 am. I sat on the ground and played this song. I still remember how I was touched when I saw the lyrics, which said , “never mind I find, someone like you. I wish nothing but the best for you.” It’s been seven years, but the same feeling emerged as I watched this video yesterday seven years ago. At that moment when I broke up with my first girlfriend, I thought the true love was to stay with your lover as long as possible or found a person who can accept all your perfect imperfections. However, now I think the true love is that you see yourself through another person. Both of you started to self-reflection about yourselves and do self-improvement continuously in a long process. Nothing is perfect in this world and it is a pity that love has reached its peak at the moment when it happened. People always laugh at how childish they used to be, but I’m sure seven years later in 2027 when I watch this video again, I will not only be surprised at how time flies but also getting more feelings about this question, which may be completely different with now.

Another thing I think of is that even though there are so many bad things in this world, or even though my lover may break up with me without warning, I can still have my family and I can still find a community or group, just like many people gather together to appreciate Adele’s music and discovery the meaning behind her music. Actually, there are still many good things in this world. The past is the past, and there is no correct answer to the real meaning of love. What we can do is to cherish the present, the family, and the thing that we now think of as true love.