The List (The Real Thing collection)

by Jade Chang

Magic is a wild animal. In a lot of ways, it doesn’t see the problems.”

We have always been comforted by lists.

But I still don’t think the List is effective because it discounts so many of the things that make a relationship actually work.”

Of course I did it; I made the List.

If I were to make a List now, though, it would have only one line: someone who truly enjoys being a person in the world.

This detail pops up in probably 70 percent of the it-happened-to-me testimonials that I’ve now obsessively read online.

How many testimonials have you read?

It makes me think that there probably is no ur-List, no originating spark. Instead, it is just a simple prayer for love that takes on the trappings of its time.

The more I delve into it, the more the List starts to feel like a diversionary tactic of late-stage capitalism, a hope bubble to keep us in thrall to a worn-out system.

Here’s what I really think about love: It’s all luck, in the purest and most abstract sense.

There is an element of luck, of dumb chance, to most things that we want very much in life.

I ask my parents if they’ve ever heard of anyone doing something similar in Taiwan, where they both grew up.

the List becomes a tool for understanding yourself.

the List is about who you want to be.

And then, after four years together, they got divorced. It was a List success story, until it wasn’t.

Love is the moment when the walls that separate us from the rest of the universe come tumbling down.

(I concentrate best in loud places where it’s slightly embarrassing to be on a laptop.)