On La Porte étroite

A Reading Journey with Strait Is the Gate

It had been far too long since I last settled down to read and put my feelings about life into words. While scrolling through online videos, I happened once again upon excerpts from Strait Is the Gate that I had already seen a year or two earlier. Perhaps it was the loneliness of that moment, or perhaps it was fate bringing them before me again and again, but those words suddenly touched me. So I decided to buy the book, and while I was at it, I also added Educated, which I had long wanted to read, to my cart.

I have to admit that I am not someone who can persevere at things; Notes from the Gaps Between Illnesses, which I began last year and still have not finished this year, is the best proof of that. Whatever enthusiasm I once had for reading would invariably be diluted by exhaustion from work or the temptation of games. Fortunately, though, when it comes to things that truly interest me, I still retain a measure of persistence deep down. 34 days later, the two books finally arrived. Fresh from work and exhausted, I opened the package. Looking at the compact copy of Strait Is the Gate, I hesitated: which of the two books should I read first? Compared with Educated, whose contents I knew a little about, the completely unfamiliar Strait Is the Gate stirred my curiosity instead. Since it was also shorter, I ultimately chose to open it first.

Before I had even begun reading, I was drawn to the cover design: a simple cross with a distinctive charm. Yet the unfamiliar foreign names in the book, such as Alissa and Jérôme, gave me trouble. I was only five or six pages in, and I could not even work out who the protagonist was. All I could do was reassure myself: “It’s all right. Just take your time.” Before I knew it, I discovered that the story revolved around love. Since this was a theme that happened to interest me, I read the entire first chapter in one sitting. I looked at the time and realized it was already late. For someone without much perseverance, making it this far was already no small improvement. Encouraging myself and remembering that I still had work the next day, I closed the book and decided to continue the following day.

Over the next week, drawn onward by the theme of love, by the promise I had made to myself, and by the departure of my gaming partner, I somehow kept reading at a pace of one chapter a day. When I realized that I had read more than 100 pages in a single week, I was delighted. Today I have reached page 130, with 40 pages left. I plan to finish it tomorrow (2025 - 05 - 17) and carefully organize my thoughts on the book; after all, I seem to have glimpsed shadows of my own journey through love in its pages, which is genuinely fascinating. Since it happens to be Saturday, I suddenly wanted to record this reading experience first. I cannot let it remain only an idea—this time, I am going to act on it!

25-05-17 22:20:08

At 22:20 on May 17, 2025, I finished Strait Is the Gate, a little later than expected. Those fragments of reading carved apart by trivial matters instead allowed the aftertaste of the ending to settle even more deeply within me. Sitting beneath my desk lamp at this moment, I finally dare to face the emotions flickering between light and shadow in the lines, like touching a glowing coal—painful, yet making its heat unmistakably clear.

I. A Shattered Reflection: Seeing Myself in Other People’s Stories

This is not a fairy tale of love coated in icing. When Alissa writes in her diary, “Teach me to defer happiness,” and when Jérôme repeatedly wavers between pursuit and loss, that contest between love and restraint resembles a cracked mirror, reflecting countless moments that feel hauntingly familiar. I remember the messages I once composed late at night only to delete them, and the hands I wanted to reach out but drew back instead. It turns out that human beings have always shared the same fixation on love: when we yearn to draw closer, we are like moths flying into a flame; once we have what we wanted, we fear the reality that will remain after the halo fades.

“But once this love is marred by a crack, I could never bear it”—these words from Alissa pierce the heart like a fine needle. We have all been Jérôme, imagining the other person as a perfect moon while pursuing them, only to discover, when we finally touch it, that the moon’s surface is covered in craters. And have we not also been Alissa, elevating love into faith amid our inner struggle, terrified that the smoke and fire of ordinary life might blacken that field of pure white? As the songs put it, “Perhaps only by giving up can I draw close to you” and “The sky is most beautiful when it is on the verge of darkness but not yet dark; a person is at their best when they are on the verge of love but not yet in love.” This contradictory desire for love comes so vividly alive on the page.

II. Love’s Dilemma: Fetters or Wings?

When I reached Alissa’s words in her diary—“I became his idol, and I also hindered his progress along the path of virtue”—I suddenly understood her struggle. Her love does not entwine like a vine; it lifts like the wind. She would rather stand in the shadows herself if it meant allowing the one she loves to fly toward a higher summit. This almost obsessive selflessness may seem excessively cruel through worldly eyes, but within the frame of reference defined by her faith, it shines with a searing light.

As readers, we always like to judge what “should” and “should not” be done from a God’s-eye view, forgetting that love has never had a standard solution. Jérôme’s persistence is love, and Alissa’s restraint is love as well; some people measure love’s depth through embraces, while others protect its purity through distance. Like the sky at dusk, the moment when blue and gray mingle is the most moving—when love reaches its extreme, perhaps it is precisely this tension of being “on the verge of love but not yet in love” that makes it so captivating.

III. The Lingering Warmth of a Hidden Flame: Imperfect Reality Is Love’s Normal State

The moment I closed the book, I suddenly understood: why do we sigh over imperfect endings? Because they tear away the veil of romanticism and expose the truest texture of life. Love has never been a mathematics problem with a standard answer worth 100 points; it is more like a hidden flame, illuminating two people while it burns but leaving scorch marks after it dies. Alissa and Jérôme’s story makes the heart tremble precisely because it so closely resembles those real-life regrets that quietly come to nothing—not because the love was insufficient, but because the way they loved was too sharp.

But who says regret cannot be another kind of fulfillment? When we shed tears for love in other people’s stories, are we not also conversing with our own souls? The confusion and resonance pulsing between the pages are quietly reshaping our understanding of love: the best love, it turns out, is not a forcibly pieced-together “Happy Ending,” but the chance to see the folds and radiance of our own souls in the process of loving and being loved.

The night is deep, and the pages beneath the desk lamp glow with warm yellow light. As I close the book, the scent of ink still lingers on my fingertips. I think this is the meaning of reading—to pass through love and hate in other people’s stories, and ultimately learn acceptance in our own lives. On the next stage of the journey, I may encounter still more riddles about love, but at this moment, I am no longer afraid of those imperfect answers. After all, life’s most moving scenery has always been found along the road of “living through it,” not at some predetermined destination.