The Red String of Fate: How an Invisible Thread connects us with The Love of Our Lives

Love. This one word can mean anything in our lives, either as an admiration, affection or a special connection for the special someone. Someday, the destined day will come. And from that moment on, our lives will change forever. It is often said that the destined someone if it is your lifetime partner, we will meet each other either way. In Japan and China, there is a legend that describes that perfectly. This is known as the story of the red string of fate (Chinese: 姻緣紅線, Yinyuan hongxian, Japanese: 運命の赤い糸, Unmei no akai ito). I first became aware of this legend not by reading folklores, but accidentally watched a Japanese anime for some reason. The show titled "Love and Lies" (恋と嘘,Romanji: Koi to Uso) details about a young boy who lived in an alternate time when Japan was known with its lowest birthrate at the time. To combat this, the Japanese government issued a law that stipulated the government-sponsored marriage. Every girl or boy turning 16 years old will be assigned to a partner chosen by the government to be married. He was assigned with a marriage partner while falling in love with someone else. The red string reference is mostly prominent on this show.

According to both the Japanese and Chinese legends (while the legend itself originated from China), the gods tied a red string to each little finger of two people before they were even born. This string can become entangled and stretched by distance, but never broken. And those two connected by it are said to be each other's "true love.” It means, no matter if both of them are separated by miles away, they are destined to meet at some point at their lives. The legend even detailed that the red string connected to the little finger is unbreakable and only connected to one person on the other side, regardless of their circumstances. This can create infinite possibilities. According to one of the stories in the Chinese Folklore, It mostly involved a young boy meeting a deity named Yue Xia Lao, the ancient Chinese God of marriage. The story goes, the boy saw the deity standing beneath the moonlight. He explained to the boy that he was actually attached to a destined wife of his with a red thread around his finger. When he showed the boy the girl in question, he instead grabbed a rock and threw it to her. Many years later, his parents arranged him to a marriage. He eventually discovered that his wife was actually that same little girl that he threw the rock at, with her scar as the result of the occurrence covered by an adornment on her eyebrow. I remember one time when I read a news article about a wealthy Russian man married a poor Chinese woman by the basis of true love, or if we are talking about the Indonesian context of this myth, the story about the 3^rd President of Indonesia, Mr. B. J. Habibie and his wife, Hasri Ainun Besari.

This is perhaps one of the famous stories about true love, eventually adapted into a feature film based on a book written by Habibie himself. Habibie first met Ainun when they were studying in secondary school. They were schoolmates at that time. Their marriage lasted from 1962 until Ainun's death in 2010. Since then until his death on September 11^th, 2019, Habibie had a habit of visiting Ainun's grave at Kalibata Heroes' Cemetery in Jakarta, claiming that he doesn't "want to be far away from her." He was rested at the same cemetery, with his grave right beside Ainun's. This was his wish from long time ago. If we tie this story with the red string folklore, it is obvious that Habibie and Ainun were destined to meet and fell in love. Even with different personal backgrounds (Habibie was an aerospace engineer and later assume office as Indonesian VP, later president, and Ainun was a medical doctor), both of them loved and cared for each other unconditionally until the end. It is safe to say that the invisible red string that attached to Habibie and Ainun's pinky fingers actually would lead them to each other.

Many will say that love is intoxicating. It can be an addiction, it can also cause pain, and more importantly, we learn how to accept, embrace and complete each other. Many still don't believe in this though, but like the myth said, somewhere, there is someone that cares, someone who loves you unconditionally, someone who will accept your ups and downs, and the most important thing, someone who does care and caress you.

I personally thought that this folklore would be irrelevant in this modern era, but the fact that some marriages last longer and people actually cared about their partners makes me wonder if this supposed red string would lead me to someone special, but to be honest, I would never know what to expect at this point. All I know is, this supposed red thread is stretched for God knows how far away, it might tangle to someone elses' and probably would be mixed up with another. But one thing is for sure, that this string would never break no matter how it goes. Love is definetly in the air, and it shows with a long, invisible red string from the ancient times.