What Love Isn't About

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.

The Man Who Has Loved

photo from http://cdnimg.visualizeus.com

The Man Who Has Loved

by Christine Magpayo

This is a poem--
A poem without a rhyme--
A poem about a man--
About a man who has loved--
Who has loved with all his heart.

This is a story.
Yes, a story never told--
A story never known--
Never known  even to them--
Even to  them who shared the love.

And so once upon a time...
Yes, something happened once upon a time--
Something that ended so quick--
'Twas so quick that it didn't seem real.
It didn't seem real but it was.

Now you ask what happened--
What happened to  the man?
Well all I know of is...
He is still that man--
That man who has loved--
Who has loved with all his heart.

---

The poem represents LOVE.

NATURE OF THE POEM

It had  no rhyme;

It had no measure.

Lines do not match but they do connect.

The poem tells us that there is a story but tells us nothing about the story.

Its brevity immortalizes its existence.

The endless questions stretch out and explore on different possibilities

even when the story itself deals with oblivion.

NATURE OF LOVE

Love does not require a certain degree of similarity and compatibility.

Love isn’t a science; it is immeasurable.

People do not necessarily have to be a perfect match;
what matters is they make both ends  meet.

Love tells us of stories but the profundity is exclusive to the two who are part of the stories.

There’s a kind of love that ends but lasts.

As long as there are what if’s and could have been’s lurking  in the mind,

A love that’s over… isn’t really over yet.

Of Wanting and Waiting and Winning

video clip  from HIMYM S04E23

Song by  Michelle  Featherstone  (Careful)

Love is a cliche we never get tired of. Maybe that's because we never really understand it. Or maybe it's ourselves that we don't understand after all. Maybe we are constantly in search of what kind of love we want, of how we plan to get it, and why we plan to keep it. Perhaps some have found the answers through the act of loving or maybe they're like me and a million others: simply hypothesizing. 

Love always deals with well-deserved happily ever afters. Maybe that's where it all gets confusing. Cause love starts not with a couple finding each other, but with an individual finding himself. Love is a good story. And just like every story, it has a prologue-- something that explains and causes the main events. And these two, for me, are of equal importance.

Wanting.

To want something is to realize that you don't have it but you would like to have it. Maybe not now, maybe not soon, but surely one day you would like to take a hold of it and own it. 

To acknowledge that you want something is to be brave enough to accept the fact that you feel  incomplete, that something is missing. And you feel it day after day til a simple want becomes  a necessity. Constantly wanting something leads to needing it. And to need something is to understand that though you might never have it, you still want it.

You can go your whole life convincing yourself you don't want or need love. Or you can risk getting hurt and be open to the idea that maybe, just maybe, love (no matter  how insignificant you think it is), is the missing piece of  jigsaw puzzle that would  complete your life.

Waiting.

To wait is to believe that not everyone is worth the risk. It means being patient for the arrival of someone you deserve. Sure there are a lot of fish in the sea.  But you can't catch them all just because they're there. When you keep on filling your boat, there might be no more room for the right fish when it arrives. I'm not saying believe in the whole "The One" thing.  Some people get it right the first time  around. Maybe you're one of the lucky "some." But if you're not, nothing's bad with the classic trial and error. Just make sure that the wrong ones, though they are not IT, they are a lot like it. 

Secondly, to wait does not only mean to wait for the "right person" but to wait for the "right time" as well. So many people get this concept wrong. By right time, I do not mean wait til you finish college, find a work, invest on some properties (though that would be ideal). What I mean is that before you go and search for your person, make sure you, yourself, is a person worth searching for. Make sure that the person you think you deserve.. deserves you as well.

Winning.

To win is to work hard. And hard work entails sacrifices which adds more value to the thing being desired. The more you work hard for something, the higher your degree of satisfaction is when the thing desired is already at hand.

Nonetheless, it is important to note that to win is not simply to have what you've wanted and waited for. Sure, we all deserve what we've worked hard for,  but the thing is, what we've worked hard for should be worth all our time, efforts, and sacrifices. It should make us happy in the end. 

Love is about wanting it, waiting for it, and winning it. You go from there.