Of heartaches & unconditional love
February 13, 2005 | 12:00am
It’s almost 4 p.m. and the house is very quiet, so quiet I actually hear the rustling of the leaves outside. I like it this time of the year – the wind is cool.
There is a still time in the afternoon when there is hardly any activity in the house, the sun is high up but no longer too hot, and the wind teases the leaves of the trees. They sound like chimes to me, and brings me back to my Lola’s house in Cebu. There she had many, many trees growing in her backyard, so many that regardless of which room you stayed in you were bound to enjoy how they sounded and what they looked like when the wind played with them. I remember always waking up after an afternoon nap to the sound of that.
As I’m writing this Juliana is in the other room playing-cum-arguing with Francis, the almost two-year-old son of our messenger, Roger. Before I left the room I told her for the nth time to please not put her ribbons and clips on Francis’ curly hair. Boys don’t wear clips, I tell her. She does not hear me, her focus and that of Francis’ now shifting to a bottle of bubbles. From among the many others that they can amuse themselves with they have to fight over that one little thing.
My last glimpse before I closed the door was of Francis, the bottle of bubbles in his hand, quizzically looking at himself in the mirror. He is now thankfully already devoid of any feminine trimmings but is not without a pair of funky green plastic sunglasses, the kind Brini Maxwell would wear. Good enough for me. Anything but clips or wigs (yes, one time it was actually that) on the innocent little boy. God forbid he might actually start enjoying it. And they were no longer arguing.
Today is just like the many quiet afternoons I spend at home. The only difference is that this time, in between browsing through my Real Simple magazine and watching American Idol, I was texting some very good friends I have not seen for quite some time. One of them says he has been very sad lately. I could only surmise at that point that it was an affair of the heart that was causing his deep sadness but I did not want to push and ask him to explain further. He later sends another message in response to my query about something connected to Christmas and somewhere between the small talk he spills out that she (perhaps the love of his life) hates him. Ahh, see I was right. I’m never wrong when it comes to detecting pained hearts. It is a talent I’ve had for as long as I can remember. It was an affair of the heart, an obviously sad one. I texted back to say that there is a very thin line between love and hate (truly, that’s not just some high-school definition of love). We ended our repartee by agreeing that with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, there should be no room for hurting hearts. As it is, there are enough sad people living out blue days – why add to the number?
There should be a law against broken hearts, if only for that one day in a year, don’t you think? Call me a sentimental fool but imagine what one perfect day of love for each and every soul out there can do to make the world happier, better. A heart made so happy in just one day that even the memory of it will make the heart big enough to give out good love the whole year through – spread a little here and there in daily doses. But that can only happen in a perfect world. In reality, there always seems to be room for just one more broken heart. One too many. Quota is never met, supply is always more than the demand.
Another text message comes in. This time from a female friend of mine who is passionately planning her own Valentine celebration with a guy she has been seeing seriously for almost a year. She is not without her share of past heartaches but she has bounced back…. and how. By the tone of her text messages I could almost picture her jumping up and down, dancing around, happily humming through her planning... what a beautiful thing, this thing called love. Such a complicated, abused feeling, too. Perhaps there is no other emotion that can be black, white, and gray all at the same time, beautiful and sad simultaneously, too.
It is always easy to talk about Valentine’s Day in the happy, giddy sense because in our minds, that is the way it should be. A day that celebrates love, loving and being loved. But to a broken heart, how can one actually say Happy Valentine’s Day?
Juliana and Francis come running down the stairs in a mad scramble, laughing and talking at the same time… well, she’s talking and he’s trying. But they understand each other. Somehow. And they make such happy noises. Looking at the two of them I realize that child-like is precisely how an adult man-woman relationship should be. Just awhile ago they were arguing, fighting over some small thing. Now they are just happy to be spending time with each other. They are content to exist in the present moment.
Think about it – wouldn’t it be nice if we could all be like the children we once were and go back to the time when our hearts were simpler? When perhaps the biggest problem (if you could call it that) was maybe which toy to choose from among the many that line the happy shelves of a place like Toy Kingdom, when sweating the small stuff was unheard of? A time when love was purely given and taken, not analyzed and taken apart too much; a time, too, when forgiving came easier, when a sorry was always meant sincerely and accepted just as easily. A time when no hurts were ever stored, no grudges bred.
Is that not how little children are? They do not have room in their hearts to store pain. Everyday is a new day for them, they embrace it with freedom from fear, always bare-naked. They give their all in the same way that they accept all that is given them. If they get hurt today, it simply is a fresh one that they deal with, never compounded on yesterday’s wounds. When sought for forgiveness they give it just as easily, and the memory of all prior pain is trashed in innocent oblivion. Erased, just like that.
That is, until they reach an age when they learn how to process and begin to understand the ways of the world; when they can actually make sense and sensibility of emotions felt and given; when they discover that it is actually nice to give and take as opposed to doing just one or the other. Then love (and life) ceases to be as simple as it used to be.
My friends always say that I give them such ideal answers to their heartaches because I do not know what that is, in the truest sense of the word. I say I hope I will never have to find out. They say it is very easy to preach what you have not practiced. What they say not everyone knows yet is that nothing ever prepares you for the pain of a broken heart. Not all the self-help books, the most intelligent answers, even the most learned of men. Each person deals with it differently, no standard formula is ever fool-proof or cure-all. No magic pills to take, no doctors to see even.
With loving always comes the possibility of hurting. Just because someone truly loves you does not mean he/she will never hurt you. And why that has to happen perhaps we will never really understand. Maybe it has to do with the truth that the person you love the most is also the same one who can hurt you the deepest. Is it not strange how the love that hurt you can be the same one that can heal you? Not always, maybe, but often enough for it to hold true.
It is hard to love unconditionally, that much I know. Yes, we can love truly, madly, deeply but never without expecting love to come back to us, hopefully in the same force.
After a heartbreak, how can someone live in freedom from fear of being hurt (again) while at the same time have the same verve for love as when he first started? Beats me, I do not have the answer to that. One of my favorite quotes was shared to me by someone very dear. It is from one May Sarton who says: "If there is deep love involved, there is deep responsibility toward it." I like the sound of that. Especially in a marriage, maybe love is not so much the absence of pain or conflict but the presence of an everyday commitment to make things work.
Sometimes you look for love in all the wrong places. You look for something you thought you did not have only to find out you’ve had it all along. You just did not realize or appreciate it because you got it in constant doses it became so ordinary. But it was never lost, it was just lost on you.
Sometimes you appreciate someone only when you almost lose him/her. Appreciate what you have while you still have it. And I say love deeply. I say love beyond the pain... love through the pain... in spite of... because of... love even when love bites... that is how great love stories are lived out. That is how great love happens. Despite all that has been said and (un)done for love and in the name of love, the fact remains: one of the most wonderful things is still having someone in this world that you love more than yourself.
There is a still time in the afternoon when there is hardly any activity in the house, the sun is high up but no longer too hot, and the wind teases the leaves of the trees. They sound like chimes to me, and brings me back to my Lola’s house in Cebu. There she had many, many trees growing in her backyard, so many that regardless of which room you stayed in you were bound to enjoy how they sounded and what they looked like when the wind played with them. I remember always waking up after an afternoon nap to the sound of that.
As I’m writing this Juliana is in the other room playing-cum-arguing with Francis, the almost two-year-old son of our messenger, Roger. Before I left the room I told her for the nth time to please not put her ribbons and clips on Francis’ curly hair. Boys don’t wear clips, I tell her. She does not hear me, her focus and that of Francis’ now shifting to a bottle of bubbles. From among the many others that they can amuse themselves with they have to fight over that one little thing.
My last glimpse before I closed the door was of Francis, the bottle of bubbles in his hand, quizzically looking at himself in the mirror. He is now thankfully already devoid of any feminine trimmings but is not without a pair of funky green plastic sunglasses, the kind Brini Maxwell would wear. Good enough for me. Anything but clips or wigs (yes, one time it was actually that) on the innocent little boy. God forbid he might actually start enjoying it. And they were no longer arguing.
Today is just like the many quiet afternoons I spend at home. The only difference is that this time, in between browsing through my Real Simple magazine and watching American Idol, I was texting some very good friends I have not seen for quite some time. One of them says he has been very sad lately. I could only surmise at that point that it was an affair of the heart that was causing his deep sadness but I did not want to push and ask him to explain further. He later sends another message in response to my query about something connected to Christmas and somewhere between the small talk he spills out that she (perhaps the love of his life) hates him. Ahh, see I was right. I’m never wrong when it comes to detecting pained hearts. It is a talent I’ve had for as long as I can remember. It was an affair of the heart, an obviously sad one. I texted back to say that there is a very thin line between love and hate (truly, that’s not just some high-school definition of love). We ended our repartee by agreeing that with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, there should be no room for hurting hearts. As it is, there are enough sad people living out blue days – why add to the number?
There should be a law against broken hearts, if only for that one day in a year, don’t you think? Call me a sentimental fool but imagine what one perfect day of love for each and every soul out there can do to make the world happier, better. A heart made so happy in just one day that even the memory of it will make the heart big enough to give out good love the whole year through – spread a little here and there in daily doses. But that can only happen in a perfect world. In reality, there always seems to be room for just one more broken heart. One too many. Quota is never met, supply is always more than the demand.
Another text message comes in. This time from a female friend of mine who is passionately planning her own Valentine celebration with a guy she has been seeing seriously for almost a year. She is not without her share of past heartaches but she has bounced back…. and how. By the tone of her text messages I could almost picture her jumping up and down, dancing around, happily humming through her planning... what a beautiful thing, this thing called love. Such a complicated, abused feeling, too. Perhaps there is no other emotion that can be black, white, and gray all at the same time, beautiful and sad simultaneously, too.
It is always easy to talk about Valentine’s Day in the happy, giddy sense because in our minds, that is the way it should be. A day that celebrates love, loving and being loved. But to a broken heart, how can one actually say Happy Valentine’s Day?
Juliana and Francis come running down the stairs in a mad scramble, laughing and talking at the same time… well, she’s talking and he’s trying. But they understand each other. Somehow. And they make such happy noises. Looking at the two of them I realize that child-like is precisely how an adult man-woman relationship should be. Just awhile ago they were arguing, fighting over some small thing. Now they are just happy to be spending time with each other. They are content to exist in the present moment.
Think about it – wouldn’t it be nice if we could all be like the children we once were and go back to the time when our hearts were simpler? When perhaps the biggest problem (if you could call it that) was maybe which toy to choose from among the many that line the happy shelves of a place like Toy Kingdom, when sweating the small stuff was unheard of? A time when love was purely given and taken, not analyzed and taken apart too much; a time, too, when forgiving came easier, when a sorry was always meant sincerely and accepted just as easily. A time when no hurts were ever stored, no grudges bred.
Is that not how little children are? They do not have room in their hearts to store pain. Everyday is a new day for them, they embrace it with freedom from fear, always bare-naked. They give their all in the same way that they accept all that is given them. If they get hurt today, it simply is a fresh one that they deal with, never compounded on yesterday’s wounds. When sought for forgiveness they give it just as easily, and the memory of all prior pain is trashed in innocent oblivion. Erased, just like that.
That is, until they reach an age when they learn how to process and begin to understand the ways of the world; when they can actually make sense and sensibility of emotions felt and given; when they discover that it is actually nice to give and take as opposed to doing just one or the other. Then love (and life) ceases to be as simple as it used to be.
My friends always say that I give them such ideal answers to their heartaches because I do not know what that is, in the truest sense of the word. I say I hope I will never have to find out. They say it is very easy to preach what you have not practiced. What they say not everyone knows yet is that nothing ever prepares you for the pain of a broken heart. Not all the self-help books, the most intelligent answers, even the most learned of men. Each person deals with it differently, no standard formula is ever fool-proof or cure-all. No magic pills to take, no doctors to see even.
With loving always comes the possibility of hurting. Just because someone truly loves you does not mean he/she will never hurt you. And why that has to happen perhaps we will never really understand. Maybe it has to do with the truth that the person you love the most is also the same one who can hurt you the deepest. Is it not strange how the love that hurt you can be the same one that can heal you? Not always, maybe, but often enough for it to hold true.
It is hard to love unconditionally, that much I know. Yes, we can love truly, madly, deeply but never without expecting love to come back to us, hopefully in the same force.
After a heartbreak, how can someone live in freedom from fear of being hurt (again) while at the same time have the same verve for love as when he first started? Beats me, I do not have the answer to that. One of my favorite quotes was shared to me by someone very dear. It is from one May Sarton who says: "If there is deep love involved, there is deep responsibility toward it." I like the sound of that. Especially in a marriage, maybe love is not so much the absence of pain or conflict but the presence of an everyday commitment to make things work.
Sometimes you look for love in all the wrong places. You look for something you thought you did not have only to find out you’ve had it all along. You just did not realize or appreciate it because you got it in constant doses it became so ordinary. But it was never lost, it was just lost on you.
Sometimes you appreciate someone only when you almost lose him/her. Appreciate what you have while you still have it. And I say love deeply. I say love beyond the pain... love through the pain... in spite of... because of... love even when love bites... that is how great love stories are lived out. That is how great love happens. Despite all that has been said and (un)done for love and in the name of love, the fact remains: one of the most wonderful things is still having someone in this world that you love more than yourself.
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