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| photo from http://www.jasapple.co.za/2011/08/pic-wishing-upon-this.html |
LOVE is a word we have long been acquainted to but its meaning remains ever-elusive. I do not
really know and understand much of what it is about, but I do have an idea of
what it is not about.
Love isn’t about ‘chemistry.’
Love is not a science or a branch
of it. Love isn’t simply about two different elements put together to form either
a positive or negative reaction.
Oftentimes, you meet a person and
you just click. You find someone who loves the same things you love— someone who wouldn’t get tired of listening
to the same song over and over; You find someone who you can share a
comfortable banter with— someone who you
can call an ugly flirt or a stupid bastard and can also call you words to that
effect, knowing all the mockery is just an expression of love; You find someone
who handles your mood swings— someone who manages to bear the world on his/her
shoulders when you’re having a crappy day. Oftentimes you find a person who does all
these and know he/she is not “the one.”
Maybe you can have all the other
people say “You look good together.” Or “You look happy together,” or the
extreme “Why not be together?” And in a spur of the moment, those simple
statements seem unfathomable because both of you are aware that what you share
is not what others see or what others expect it to be.
On the contrary, some people are
like North Pole and South Pole who, after a lot of argumentations, agreed to meet halfway at the
equator, flattening out bulges of differences.
Sometimes, you find someone who seem to be your exact opposite and yet
know he/she is your person. Maybe one
prefers ballad while the other prefers rock; Maybe one is too loud and
outspoken while the other is shy and oversensitive; Maybe one is too optimistic
while the other is very skeptic and pessimistic. Sometimes you find someone who doesn’t seem
to be the type of person you would want to share an eternity with but you vow
to stick together forever anyway.
Perhaps people would see no
spark. Perhaps the world guffaws at the
idea of you being together. But does that matter? Not as much as what both of
you think. Maybe it’s about believing that what you have is right even when
others dictate you it’s wrong.
Love isn’t about compatibility.
Love isn’t about the right timing.
There is no perfect magical
moment. When you keep on waiting for it, you’ll most probably end up not having
any moment at all. As it has been said in the
film Ever After (A Cinderella Story) and I quote: “You cannot leave everything to Fate, boy. She's got a lot to do.
Sometimes you must give her a hand.”
You are not the knight in shining
armor or damsel in distress in your very own fairy tale who’d surely get a
happily ever after in the end. It is important to remember that you are just
one of the billion people hoping to find their true love in a messed up world.
In the first place, who’s in the
position to say when it’s the right time and when it’s not? Maybe your person
is still with the wrong person, just waiting for you to save him/her. Maybe it would
be really nice to casually admit feelings in the middle of answering a Math
quiz (provided you won’t be accused of cheating). Maybe by the time your person
finishes college he/she have shunned the idea of love and you’ll regret not saying that you’ve always liked him/her since first
grade.
Maybe the wrong timing is the
perfect timing.
Love isn’t about keeping the object of
affection.
Not all love leads to commitment
and marriage. But does that make it any less real? Not all who had loved won.
But does that really make one a loser?
Love is not about possession or
reciprocity of the same and equal affection. As Mr. David Cain said in one of
his articles in Thought Catalog:
“Love reveals itself when you release your need to have the object of
your affection, and see that there’s no reason to make it yours. That it exists
at all is enough. To love something is to disappear in its favor — to die to
your own interests so that it can be what it is.”
Love does not obligate.
If I am to be asked what love is, I would say it’s
about acceptance and change, courage and fear, bliss and suffering. It isn’t
about chemistry or right timing or keeping the object of affection. It is not about
any of the three but possibly all of these combined.
