Contemplating about love on a sleepless Tuesday night





I can still remember those high school-ish little notebooks called slum notes (or whatever we used to call it) that we pass around the campus. Yes, the ones that ask questions from the bio-data type to those questions on crushes, love, firsts, etc.



There is one question that I always find hard to answer, or maybe it’s better to put it this way: I never answered it the way they wanted me to—the question “what is love (or define love).”



Well, I have to admit that the question really make me think several times, and most of the time, I’ll end up answering it my usual “well, it’s an indefinable and unexplainable feeling.”



At times, I’d argue that it depends on what level of love in that context, pointing out that there are different kinds of love.



I remember one night, there was this person who asked me that question, and when I can’t give him a definite answer “ayayay…you know what I mean—love, you don’t really know what love is, do you?”



I felt as if my heart stopped—how could this guy tell me those words when we barely even know each other? Quite annoyed, I asked him, “okay, what is love?”



He answered, “love for me is accepting her—whoever she is, wherever she came from, whatever past she had everything about her.”



Then I asked, “but in order to do that, you have to know the person first right? You have to know who she is, where she came from, her past, I mean, you have to know her better, because you can’t willingly accept something that you do not know of.”



“Yes” he answered.



“But how are you going to know all of those?” I asked again.



“I don’t know…that’s why I don’t have a girlfriend” he confided.



Then we continued to chat…



I reflected on the question, “what is love?” and looked back at the recent occurrences in my life, and that conversation. Although I still consider it as an unfathomable feeling, I came up with a more sensible meaning of love.



I learned that love is looking at the person, knowing his flaws and realizing that I can actually see through his shortcomings, and recognize the nobility of his heart. Yes, it is welcoming him to my life, whoever he is, wherever he came from, whatever past he may have. It is seeing beyond the superficial, it is searching deeper into his soul and finding that innate goodness. It’s forgetting “what I look for” and appreciating “what I found.” It is finally having the courage to move beyond my comfort zone and reach out to embrace and face the challenge of facing a new phase in life. It is more than just the sensations, and mixed feelings brought about by the sudden rush of the currents of one’s emotion.



No, I hope I’m not being misunderstood here…I am not in love with the guy that I chat with that night. This is about someone else. Someone I never thought of liking. Maybe I can write about him in my future blogs but for now, I do have a hectic life.