Each human story runs for a certain length of time. With love stories, you never know when it is over.
Bruce and Tina were high school sweethearts. Well, kind of. It was one of those awkward stories of youth where being young made things so complicated. Bruce was part of our high school peer group. Tina was from the all-girls school nearby and belonged to the circle of girls we hung around with.
But Tina was going around with someone else then so Bruce could not really make a lot of headway with her. But there was an attraction, for sure, and it was expressed in the way high school love was innocently expressed — innocent flirting, some love letters, some stolen moments when Tina was “single.” All this happened before Bruce left for America on our junior year to migrate.
Meanwhile, a few letters were exchanged throughout our high school and early college years, until they lost touch. After college, when both of them were at least seven years older, Bruce came back to Manila on business and while he was here, he gave Tina a letter saying that his love for her had not died. In the letter, he actually proposed marriage. But alas, his timing was off. Tina had become engaged and was to marry in a few weeks. The letter, which Tina’s sister Carina had received and was supposed to give to Tina, was never opened. Tina had committed herself to her soon-to-be husband and she did not want to complicate her life.
And so life went on separately for both of them. Tina got married. Bruce went back to the US, got a job and met a woman whom he married. For the next 35 years or so, Tina and Bruce would not hear of or from each other.
About three years ago, Bruce came home to Manila for some personal stuff he had to settle. It was a warm and tearful reunion as he met old friends and reconnected with his life back when things where simpler. Now in his 50s, he had recently divorced his wife in the US. He was in between jobs, had a bad back but still had that twinkle in his eye when it came to being open to love.
He came to my house and I introduced him to my wife Lydia who he had never met. That same night, we got to talking about old times and the girls we liked. He mentioned Tina and to his surprise, Lydia said that Tina was her cousin! Delighted, he wondered aloud whether he could reconnect with Tina just for old times’ sake.
A few days later, the two met and caught up and shared stories about their lives now. They were so amazed that little seemed to have changed. Bruce looked the same to Tina with his curly hair and his sense of humor. In Bruce’s eyes, Tina was still as radiantly beautiful as she was back then!
An art teacher, she had that fresh, open outlook on life. But Bruce was saddened to know that Tina was not happy in her relationship. She had reached a point in her marriage where she felt she had no love left to give her partner. She felt empty. She had nothing to give. Their love story had run its course.
It was a great afternoon that Bruce and Tina spent together. There was a warm feeling of comfort between them as old friends; they connected easily on many levels.
A few days later, Bruce had to go back home to the US. In the months that followed, they renewed ties through letters. Not long after, Tina’s marriage finally ended. She and her husband separated. She felt sad but relieved to have finally made the important decision to leave. As she had long dreamed, she left Manila and joined the rest of her family in the US to start a new life.
After more than a year of writing, calling and seeing each other occasionally (they lived in different states), Tina and Bruce discovered that they had completely rekindled their love. Now in their 50s, they awakened the love they had for each other which had been dormant for 38 years. It wasn’t long before Tina introduced Bruce to her family who were completely taken by him.
Soon after, the two decided to marry.
It is amazing how love stories can play out in the most curious way. Imagine how it must be to end up with someone you have loved since high school, except that it happens almost 40 years later! It is quite a story considering that they both entered marriages and had families in between the high school romance and the formal union decades later.
During this Valentine’s Day season, a lot will be written about love and the romance of it. Poets, writers, philosophers, psychologists, holy men have mused about love and will continue to do so. Love, after all, is one of the great mysteries among the Big Ones like God, the Universe and even the meaning of life itself.
In the process, great men have tried to define love, corner it, solve it, release it, put it in a cage and institutionalize it to be able to understand it. But love and the heart have their own nature, and their reasons and logic (or lack of it) travel circuitous and unpredictable paths that sometimes reach happy, eternal shores.
Marriage, I believe, is a calling, and after much thought and observation, I am inclined to agree with M. Scott Peck that in the same light, carefully thought-out and conscientious divorces and separations can be true callings as well. Strangely, one may try as hard as he can to make a marriage work, but in many cases, it just doesn’t work out. Yet in other instances, some people hardly seem to try at all, but it’s a match made in heaven.
Such are the strange ways of love.
Shakespeare wrote: “Love is blind and lovers cannot see the petty follies that they themselves commit.” My college philosophy teacher explained to us the strangeness of love. Why is it, he asked, that sometimes people seem to be so in love with “the wrong person,” or one who is so imperfect? He said that the easiest explanation is that people who are not in love have blinders and cannot see the virtues that lie inside a person’s heart. Perhaps.
I think of love as one of those things we encounter that dangles the prospect of an eternal experience. Perhaps it is not something to be shared with one person alone. Or perhaps it is. I am not really sure. Most people marry for love and with an eye toward and a shot at eternity, but it does not always end that way — at least not the first time, or maybe never at all.
But what is life without love? Or vice versa? One can’t have any meaning without the other.
What is important, though, is our very commitment to live life with love at whatever age we are in, however imperfect we are at it, and to never give up on it.
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Last call for the 44th run of “Tapping the Creative Universe” (TCU), a cutting-edge creativity workshop, will run every 7 to 9 p.m. from Feb. 16 to 20, concluding on Feb. 23. The venue is 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights. Cost for the workshop is P5,000, inclusive of materials and merienda.
TCU is a workshop that is already six years in the running. It has helped hundreds of students with its transformative, practical concepts that help unleash the creativity and joy of all who attend. If you are in between dreams, goals, careers, loves, lives and need of a jolt, or a nudge to get you out of a rut, this is your chance. It’s a new year. Time to get a new you going!
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For the syllabus, questions or reservations, e-mail me at emailjimp@gmail.com or call 426-5375, 381-4768 or 0916-8554303. You can also visit http://tappingthecreativeuniverse.com for info.