Bản tiếng Anh của tản văn Trang Hạ “Vì sao tình yêu chưa tới?” đăng trên Tạp chí Nữ Doanh Nhân bản tiếng Anh, tháng 6/2012
Vô cùng cảm ơn các anh chị đã giúp Trang Hạ hiệu đính bản tiếng Anh này:
Anh Hà Nguyễn
Chị Linh Phan
Anh Ralph Hurtado
LOVE – WHY NOT COME YET?
Author: Trang Ha
Where can your ideal love be found? Where can you find Mr. Perfect, who is ready to love you and possesses all the desired qualities a man should have?
Some female friends of mine, who are about 40, have never been in love with anyone. To be exact, they have never heard flirting words from men.
You took interest in a male classmate at high school, but you just kept it a secret. During your university days, you would always join in a group of female best friends whenever there was a meeting with students from other schools. Going to work, you got infatuated with your boss who was, however, married. You found all other colleagues, apart from your boss, childish and tasteless. Your friends got married, one by one, when they were about or over thirty years of age. At such an age, you got packed and left for your overseas studies. You then met another group who studied abroad because of having never been married. So you were able to feel how wise it was to pick up a life of singleness and freedom.
With no intention of marrying foreign guys, you took your overseas studies as a chance to experience a collection of cafés and bookstores in another country. You wouldn’t return until your feet started to get tired. On returning to Vietnam, you became an adopted mother of your fellows’ children. Whenever the New Year holidays approached, you got busy preparing lucky money for children not your own.
An idea suddenly sprung up to your mind, i.e., the ambition to explore Tibet. You then rushed off, following a group of online acquaintances. The journey gave you some enlightenment, both physical and mental. You soon became a reader of horoscope books. The more you read, the more interest you took. You wondered why you had not taken interest in traveling and the science of mysteries sooner. You get your working day at your office started with some reading of online newspapers. You also drop by blogs or the Facebook pages of your friends. There is a posting that keeps you longer than usual:
A construction firm has just won a bid. Its Director was the guy who once slept next to your shoes during the camping trip in your university days. It was quite a long time ago. Time flies! Such a period of time is long enough for an immature and childish adolescent to grow into a serious and successful man, yet he was not a part of your life.
The Sales Manager of a company answered in an interview about complaints from customers. The manager used to be nothing more than a dumpy girl. It is so unexpected that her father was former Deputy Manager of the mother company. Power just passes on throughout the familial relationships.
You find a few more good reasons to stay at this table with this computer and to browse through online news every morning.
A language school is recruiting students and offering attractive discounts on school fees. The guy running the school was once keen on online forums and got involved in several harsh quarrels with you. While he has already started his own business, you are still recollecting your distant memories.
Leaving the computer screen for some phone calls, you then get back to your seat where you again drop by your favourite websites.
~ ~ ~
At the age of 15, you could be easily touched by flirting words from a boy no matter who he was. You didn’t care about either his personality traits or his family background. His academic excellence would mean everything.
At the age of 20, it was the time of romantic love. You were ready to kick your follower just because he didn’t know what your favourite flowers were. Those who said sweet words could absolutely win your heart.
At the age of 30, an ideal image had to be a man both romantic and independent financially, also well-behaved and in favour of your relatives and friends.
At the age of 40, things started getting complicated. A desired man was supposed to be romantic, independent financially, well-behaved, also well-informed about current affairs, tasteful, known via the Internet, and not a home dictator. Above all, he had to be unmarried.
What would the ideal image of a lover be like at the age of 50?
You may never recognize that the ideal man at forty years of age is the childish guy in his twenties, the guy in his thirties struggling with life and career that you have left behind. You have never fallen in love with anyone as you have never given the childish guy a chance.
Not all the best things in life are wrapped in the best package. Understandably, you did let a good man go beyond your reach only because he did not look chic and said sweet words. He did not know how to win your heart either. He did not even have glowing success at the time he met you.
An honest and considerate man might look pretty clumsy. He has no idea of what kind of flowers you like, what kind of promise you prefer and what kind of compliments you love to hear. That’s why you leave him behind at the age of 20.
A successful man may originally be an arrogant man with big self-illusions on the way to establishing himself. He is hectic with every single opportunity that comes to him. You find it hard to fall in love with such a weird guy.
A good husband who loves his wife and children, and knows how to shoulder the burden with you, might be a heavy smoker who is absent-minded and scruffy-looking, comes from a poor family background, rides a run-down motorbike, and has no idea of the ‘in’ movies and singers. Again, you have missed a potential husband right at the first round.
Amidst the despair at your current life, you keep sobbing with romance movies which feature handsome guys who are faithful and passionate in love, successful in life, and always ready to please their girlfriends. ‘Where can good men be found?’ you think unhappily, ‘From whom can I hear three words – I love you? Why are good men already married? Where are unmarried good men? Where and where?’
They are not beyond your reach. In fact, they have always been beside you since your early adolescence up until your middle age.
The problem is you have never been aware of who they are.
Trang Hạ 