"Oh, wake up, girl, it's just a crush." — On the concept of "crush" in English culture

page views:1 Publication date:2021-05-18

There's a word in English called "crush." If you look it up in a dictionary, it tells you it means "to crush, grind, or overwhelm." Later, when I went to America, I learned that as a noun, it also has another meaning: "a brief, intense, but shy infatuation." For example, "I had a crush on him" means "I had a brief, intense, but shy crush on him."
The meaning of "crush" is so long and subtle that I haven't found a suitable Chinese word to translate it. "心动" (xīn dòng, meaning "heart flutter") seems like a close translation, but compared to "crush," "心动" is weaker in intensity, longer in duration, and has a hint of ambition towards romance and marriage. "Crush," on the other hand, is fleeting, but it leaves you completely captivated.
I think "crush" is a particularly useful word. It's so useful because I realize that most "love" in life exists in the form of a "crush." If I were to count on my fingers how many people I've truly "loved" in the past 30 years, it would probably be one… two… definitely no more than three. But if I think about it, how many people have I had a crush on? The list goes on and on—I'm almost embarrassed to count.
Love is like tuberculosis, while a crush is like a cold. Tuberculosis leaves you severely weakened, barely surviving, while a cold just makes you cough and sneeze, but it flares up every now and then.
A crush usually comes on fast. When it first arrives, you might mistake it for love. Its eruption is usually caused by a sudden, overwhelming influence, making you infatuated. For example, you might like someone who's good-looking, so handsome it makes you drool. Or someone's way of speaking makes you feel particularly comfortable. Or you might read an article online and think, "Wow, it's so well-written! I have to get to know him; something has to happen between us." Sometimes, the reasons for a crush are so trivial they're inexplicable. Maybe it's just because a man has particularly beautiful hands, and that day he used those hands to pick food for you, and you'll like him for three days. You might be unable to forget a man's childlike smile for a whole week.
But at the beginning, you don't know it's just a three-day, one-week crush. Holding your pounding heart, you think, "He's so good, so unparalleled, the person I've been searching for my whole life!"
Then you start fantasizing. For a while, anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, you live in a whirlwind of emotions. You fantasize about him coming to see you. You fantasize about walking down the street, crossing the road, and him holding your hand, refusing to let go. You fantasize about being in a room, trying out countless ways to hug, yet still not finishing what you wanted to say to each other.
Once you've exhausted all your fantasies, the crush's fuel is depleted.
The difference between a crush and love is that the fantasy vanishes before it can even be acted upon. Perhaps it didn't translate into action because you were too shy to express yourself, and then you inadvertently missed out on that person. Perhaps it's because you lacked the opportunity to "develop" the relationship; the distance in time or space caused that initial spark to suffocate from lack of oxygen. Perhaps it's because as you got closer and saw the other person for who they truly were, their "highlights" were gradually diluted by their other flaws, so that the feeling decayed before it even had a chance to blossom.
Love is like a small animal; it needs nurturing to grow, requiring daily care and attention. Without the gradual "feeding" of small acts, a crush is fleeting and then fades away.
The other person might not even know that you once had a "brief, passionate, and shy love" for them, and you yourself might not even admit or believe that you ever had such a "brief, passionate, and shy love" for them. But there was indeed a brief period when you were overjoyed because of this person. You were ecstatic, oblivious to everything else, completely infatuated. You defied gravity and soared in a dreamlike state.
A crush is ephemeral. Its cruelty and beauty lie in this.
When a crush tries to transform from a spark into a seed, taking root and sprouting in reality, all sorts of "calculations" begin to emerge: Oh dear, he seems quite sharp-tongued... His "career" isn't that great... He's quite a womanizer... He's not that good-looking... Then "responsibility," "morality," "family," all the noise of the world, begin to infiltrate the crush under the guise of "love," corroding it from a bright whistle into a dragging soap opera.
Worse still, people often mistake a crush for love, ruining the lightness of that fantasy. People are eager to pull a heavy story from that fleeting moment of light, ultimately being overwhelmed by this heaviness, sinking into a quagmire from which they can't escape.
But how can lightning be fixed? Some say that facing certain possibilities, turning away is a beautiful mistake, but going forward is a foolish one.
So when a crush comes, indulge it, but don't try to grasp it, don't force its head into the grazing land of love. You can rest your chin on your hand, meticulously planning every detail of those impossible scenarios: debating with yourself what to wear, what to say, what questions to ask, and the appropriate gaze when you see him again, all while knowing deep down that you'll forget him next month. You're infatuated with this fantasy, but you remain stuck in it. You watch the match in your hand, so short, slowly burning to your fingertips before going out. After it's extinguished, you feel grateful for that brief but vibrant flame in the boundless darkness.
The following is from Liu Yu's blog:
After gaining a deeper understanding of American culture, I've discovered that the concept of "crush" is quite fascinating. It's incredibly precise, yet rare in our culture. Having read so many romance novels, no one has ever told me to distinguish between a crush and love: a crush is a brief, sudden infatuation, while love is the communion and dependence between two hearts after knowing each other inside and out.
Thinking about all the confusion I've experienced over the past eighteen years, sometimes it was just a crush, but I tragically mistook it for the arrival of love, resulting in being deeply immersed in it while simultaneously agonizing over the question, "Why have I fallen for someone again?" I wish someone would have jumped out and said to me then, "Oh, wake up, girl, it was just a crush."
It was just a crush. So I could openly fall for it, and then, after sobering up, move on with a mix of amusement and gratitude, patiently waiting for true love to arrive. We can be fleeting lovers to anything or anyone, but we should always be loyal guardians of our distant loved ones.

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"Oh, wake up, girl, it's just a crush." — On the concept of "crush" in English culture

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