Maybe one day;

When you’ve flown enough heights

to reach the skies you never knew existed; 

When you’ve grasped the stars

and things you thought you could never comprehend; 

When you’ve seen all the colours

that your big brown eyes can capture in your memory; 

When you’ve had too many dead end conversations

with yourself in the middle of the night;

When you’ve drank one too many glasses

and get temporarily intoxicated in the high of others’ company;

When you’ve tried it all to make you feel alive…

Your heart will know that nothing in the universe

and I mean nothing

can make you fly again,

grasp all the freckles in the sky,

make new colours exist, 

fill your head with words that blow your mind,

and perpetually intoxicate you

like hearing that thump in your heart

when your hand finds its way in mine. 

8 hours of sleep and naps after you wake up; sakto-lang-pagdating-mo parking slots; for booties and bikes; for never ending debates and discussions on things I can’t even for the life of me comprehend; for little catch ups on stalls; playing mono deal after ten years; fast paced sign ups; funny campaign videos; things that make me look forward and loathe med school at the same time and surprisingly, I am thankful for work that reminds me that I am up to something. :)

Solitary walks in shopping malls, for Chickenjoy and candy; for finding things you thought would never be available again, things that cheer people up; for those heart melting smiles that send me to outer space (eeep); for empty Sec-A classrooms; for Kuya Bart who speaks nothing but the truth while cleaning; for plenty of hugs and zen humming noises; fluffy adorable dogs; the chance to have 8 hours of sleep tonight; and most importantly, the loveliest friends on earth. :)

It’s been more than 2 years since I’ve posted something like this, when I used to do it everyday, I think it’s about time I do this again. 

I had to read this article, ‘Love’ by Scott Peck for Theo and I must say I have never been so enlightened on the subject. By God, it is amazing. 

Apparently, falling in love is different from loving. I can be in love with you and yet not love you and vice versa. Although it is necessary for one to truly love, falling in love is only the beginning of it. For when finally all those romantic and cheesy tendencies fade we begin to scratch the surface and see everything clearly. Most times it is when we fall out of love with someone that we truly and deeply love. 

What is love anyway? “The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” That’s what he says. Therefore while the high that falling in love ends our feeling of loneliness and helps us to share our persona with another, in the end, it is narcissistic and only aims for our own welfare due to all of our insatiable need to receive affection. We fall in love because we like the feeling of it and for the sake of it but not necessarily to make us better people. 

Let us all face it. We are all lonely and we all yearn to share whatever it is we have to offer with people just so we could get something in return. Worse comes to worse we just want what people have to offer and don’t really mind that what’s on their own plates are our own crap. We get all excited with how we share the same taste in music, watch movies and cuddle and how we can take strolls holding hands etc. etc. etc. But the thing is, after all of that fades and when we start to grow out of the feeling of falling in love we think… What now? We just wanna conform and stick by the relationship because we are ok. There’s nothing wrong with it and we get what we want. But the thing is it’s not necessarily what we need. And we’re only scared of the unknown and the inevitable. We will eventually become so comfortable to the feeling of having another person that we will be scared to live without them and all that. We feel that we will be less of a person without them. But we fail to see that we’ve been leeching on the feeling and the high all along and that we as people have become stagnant. We fail to stand on our own that only separation can bring us collapse. Hence all the emo songs about breakups immediately followed by the self-empowerment sections in the playlist. But it is paradoxical how in some ways, the growth and maturity that comes with separation is necessary to achieve togetherness. 

People fall in and out of love and there are only two choices. To keep loving or to stay there, in that fleeting feeling that goes away faster than two shakes of a lamb tail. To keep loving although not as intense or passionate as falling in love is to achieve that extraordinary high that comes from wanting a person’s growth and happiness more than your own. It lasts longer and is more satisfying than the feeling of holding hands or cuddling or all that couple-y stuff. To truly love is to want to love yourself too and wanting your own growth. This maybe a hard pill to swallow but hey, it’s love right? It is what it is. That is love. Shit. That’s real love.  

While I blame movies and the media for showing us all the sham that is falling in love that gives us all our false expectations, only getting us disappointed, I say let’s all grow out of it and be better than mindless robots who fall into the trap of this whole obsession that is falling in love (or “love”). I say let’s be better than that and contribute relationships that will really last in the future and not marriages that last shorter than Kim Kardashian’s.

And so I will say to myself nowadays: I don’t want to fall in love anymore. Fuck it, I wanna fall out of love with someone and love that person. I wanna fall so gloriously out of love with a person that I can truly love this person and make this person something more than what he already is, love this person so much that I’ll want nothing more than to make him happy because it makes me happy, to be in the paradox that is the selfishness and unselfish nature of real love.  

And when you’re needing your space
To do some navigating
I’ll be here patiently waiting
To see what you find

And so it is that we say goodbye to the year that was 2011. God it feels great to finally leave it behind. 

I will remember things to cherish and leave all those that will only hinder moving on to a new beginning. I feel very optimistic about 2012 and I feel so refreshed. It’s like breathing new air (ironic since there’s smoke everywhere haha) I am sure though that there will be plenty of things to challenge me this coming year. I hope God will give me plenty of strength to face them all and with this assurance I say: challenge accepted. But for now, I’ll bask in this smoke filled air that brings the smell of a new start. 

Happy New Year! :) 

I leave you with perhaps my favourite version of Auld Lang Syne from Mairi Campbell & Dave Francis.