To Have and To Hold...And Never Part
How we define love is a combination of all our ideals, values, dreams, desires and experiences. I have always thought that love was consists of a process that follows the law of action and reaction, the theory of "ifs and thens" and the concept of an absolute formula that the universe will conspire all its elements for a favorable, ideal and the much coveted "happily ever after".
After years of continuous learning, I mark my 34th year with the conclusion that everything I thought and believed love was, was just a tiny fraction of the spectrum of what it really is about. I say this because I know that as I continue my journey in life, I know I am yet to be marvelled by what love truly is and what it can do not just to those who believes in it but also to those who have lost faith and stopped believing that true love still exists. This is not to say that it will come knocking on your door one day and roll out a red carpet with Cinderella 's carriage waiting at the end of the carpet, neither does it come with a talking monkey ready to chauffer you as you fly around the world in a magic carpet passing by the Pyramids of Egypt and the Leaning Tower of Piza or wherever you might want to stop over before reaching Agrabah. This is not what it is all about...not at all. In fact, if this is your idea of what love is, brace yourself and prepare for a big revelation which is going to change you for the rest of your life.
Love is not just about fairytales and childhood fantasies coming into life. Although in a perfect world, I think everyone deserves their own fairytale in life. The truth is... Love and being in love is full of mysteries and revelations unfolding right in front of your eyes, your heart and your entire life. Love is never easy. Anyone who has experienced true love would tell you that expecting it to be a walk on the park is pure manage and insanity. Falling in love and staying in love with someone drives you crazy...and when I say crazy, I mean losing and giving up all logic, rational and sensible understanding and judgment all because we believe it is love...and we subscribe to the idea with every wishful thinking and all the secret wishes we've made on falling stars that in time, love will eventually pull through.
My idea of love has now changed from the unrealistic fairytale-like kind of love to the real world human inter-related kind of love. The truth is when you truly love someone, the true blue honest to goodness kind of love, you will realize that love's goal is not to make everything easy for anyone. In fact, love is not practical, it never is and I doubt it will ever be. True love forces you to love not just the person. I say it forces you because when you fall madly deeply in love with someone, you no longer have a choice but to love every bit of them. You can't hand pick what you want to love and leave out the rest. You fall in love with their entire being and all the other extensions that comes along with them...and this is where the tests really come in. It's not so hard to fall in love with a person. But the challenge learning to love the person as a whole and entirerity. Just like ourselves, this person has had a world before we came along. All their experiences, the people who were a part of the person they have become. In short...their and our pasts. The past that if it weren't for them, we would've been a different person from who we are now. The past that molded us to become our own person. The past that conspired every event we had in our lives and brought us to the person we are so in love with. Yes, the past is both the protagonist and antagonist in many love stories. Why? Because it is the past that has brought us to the present. And it is what carries us to the future if we allows ourselves to move on and learn from it to make the best of the present.
I was wrong to believe that love was a process consist of procedures with instructions to follow. Love has no process. Love is freestyling your way through everything life throws at you and doing anything and everything it takes to things work.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Saturday, February 22, 2014
The Measure of Love
The Measure of Love
For the longest time, I've always believed that one's true measure of love is their ability to make sacrifices and give as much effort to make the person they love happy. I believed that when you truly love someone, you strictly follow a list of "do's and dont's". That although no two love stories or relationships are exactly the same, the recipe for a successful relationship is absolute... which is: Never mess up! With this belief I felt that in relationships, there are no room for errors. One may only be given one chance and if you ever mess up that chance and you find yourself alone and lonely, then more likely than not, you brought it upon yourself. I was a perfectionist when it came to love. I did not want to make a mistake. I was afraid of doing the wrong things, choosing the wrong words to say, showing my weakness and making a mistake regardless of what it is. This is not to say that I never did.. in fact, I made so many mistakes. Fortunately, fast forward to today I can say that I've learned from them. However, with this, unknowingly, I've also set an expectation of close to perfection from the person I truly love. For me, I thought everyone who was in love had the same philosophy as I did and whenever I had to deal with disappointments, it was hard for me to understand why I was let down and why things couldnt turn out the way it was planned or how I expected things to be. Again, I expected perfection and seamless turn of events. Little did I know that with this expectation came the perfect recipe for failure in my relationship.
I had to learn this the hard way... a very hard way. The hardest I could ever go through in my life. With the expectation of perfection, I pushed love away. I pushed the one I love away. I didnt know then that whenever we set this expectation, it is almost asking our partner to walk on egg shells and expect a smooth walk from them for as long as they are with us. This is impossible any way we look at it. It opens a box of insecurities not just for one but for the both of you. One will always have a feeling of not being good enough and the other will have the feeling of not getting enough. Both these feelings will be felt and experienced by each at different times within the relationship from which frustration will build up then eventually resentment will settle in. When this happens the relationship will soon be at breakpoint and off to a downward spiral and slippery slope. Seldom will it be repairable. I've come to realize that expectations are a relationship's greatest posion or it could also be its deadliest poison.
As painful as a breakup could be, looking back one year later, I realized that maybe it was necessary. Maybe that's what took for us to grow and be better as individuals. We needed that time apart. We needed to find ourselves and realize what was good in our lives not when we no longer had it but realize it when we had it and rebuild from there. We had to remember everything that was good before it turned bad. I had to realize what I was was doing wrong just as much as what I was doing right. I had to re-assess my expectations. So many ifs and buts, whys, hows, whos, whens, wheres..... virtually all the interrogatives I can think of I drilled my head into. I kept asking myself so many questions as if the answers to those questions would change the situation I was in at time. I knew there was no fixing to me, unless I was again with the one I truly love. My biggest question was: Was I truly loved?
I never thought I will actually get an answer to this question. I had a recurring thought that when Im old and grey, I will be on ny death bed, still asking the same question and wondering about the answer decades after. I felt that the answer to that question is what would complete my existence. The Omega to my Alpha.
It took a year to hear the answer... the answer that has always been there all along. The answer that I failed to recognized because I had a completely different expectation subconsciously. I've always based one's love by how much can be sacrificed to make me happy. How much effort will be put in to keep a promise. For each time things didnt turn out the way it was planned or how I wanted it, I always compared it to how I wouldve done it given the same situation. The only problem was... I was not in the same situation. I never was. Therefore, there was no way what I would think I wouldve done, could have been done. Simply because our situation and circumstances were different. And my expectations were completely off tangeant.
It took a year of the loneliest nights, and the hardest days with painful happy memories consuming me every single day realizing that I might have already lost the love of my life to finally recognize that love is never measured by the way I always thought it should be. Love is never absolute in the sense that different people love in different ways but even with this, it doesnt mean that they love any less than we do
. What I thought was a great love was even greater when I beagn to look at things from their perpective. The love that was being given to me was so much greater than what I had expected it to be. Much bigger that what I could even imagine for myself.
Little did I know that with every promise kept entailed a great sacrifice for their part. Every moment spent with me meant living another life. Every morning with me was a race to the sun. And every night shared together meant reaching for the stars without the moon shining. That every step taken with me was a leap over the water. I failed to recognize that every moment with me was truly all there was to keep, and yet I was given that moment just for us to be together...just to make me happy.
A year later, now older and hopefully wiser... I know better, after understanding what really happened and what went wrong. The only true measure of love can never be defined other than by one giving their very best. The best that they can and with the best that they have. The only unit of measurement for love is one's BEST! And in fact, when you are given their best, there is no longer any need to measure. Because truly, love should not be measured. Loving someonehas nothing to do with perfection. Contrary to this, love means being secure knowing that one's love for you is greater than your mistakes and failures. That when your shadow leaves at your darkest moments, you have their hand to hold until you finally find the light and still, you find them with you, next to you.. It is allowing room for mistakes and learning from them to be better. Not just as an individual but a better partner as well. Love is giving yourself in complete surrender trusting that you are loved the best way they know how. Love is believing what your heart has always known. Love is that feeling only understood by your heart and soul, only shared with that special special person .Love is setting aside questions as we follow where our heart leads us. Love is me and you, just us, believing in the promise of forever.
Cheers,
joyous =)
For the longest time, I've always believed that one's true measure of love is their ability to make sacrifices and give as much effort to make the person they love happy. I believed that when you truly love someone, you strictly follow a list of "do's and dont's". That although no two love stories or relationships are exactly the same, the recipe for a successful relationship is absolute... which is: Never mess up! With this belief I felt that in relationships, there are no room for errors. One may only be given one chance and if you ever mess up that chance and you find yourself alone and lonely, then more likely than not, you brought it upon yourself. I was a perfectionist when it came to love. I did not want to make a mistake. I was afraid of doing the wrong things, choosing the wrong words to say, showing my weakness and making a mistake regardless of what it is. This is not to say that I never did.. in fact, I made so many mistakes. Fortunately, fast forward to today I can say that I've learned from them. However, with this, unknowingly, I've also set an expectation of close to perfection from the person I truly love. For me, I thought everyone who was in love had the same philosophy as I did and whenever I had to deal with disappointments, it was hard for me to understand why I was let down and why things couldnt turn out the way it was planned or how I expected things to be. Again, I expected perfection and seamless turn of events. Little did I know that with this expectation came the perfect recipe for failure in my relationship.
I had to learn this the hard way... a very hard way. The hardest I could ever go through in my life. With the expectation of perfection, I pushed love away. I pushed the one I love away. I didnt know then that whenever we set this expectation, it is almost asking our partner to walk on egg shells and expect a smooth walk from them for as long as they are with us. This is impossible any way we look at it. It opens a box of insecurities not just for one but for the both of you. One will always have a feeling of not being good enough and the other will have the feeling of not getting enough. Both these feelings will be felt and experienced by each at different times within the relationship from which frustration will build up then eventually resentment will settle in. When this happens the relationship will soon be at breakpoint and off to a downward spiral and slippery slope. Seldom will it be repairable. I've come to realize that expectations are a relationship's greatest posion or it could also be its deadliest poison.
As painful as a breakup could be, looking back one year later, I realized that maybe it was necessary. Maybe that's what took for us to grow and be better as individuals. We needed that time apart. We needed to find ourselves and realize what was good in our lives not when we no longer had it but realize it when we had it and rebuild from there. We had to remember everything that was good before it turned bad. I had to realize what I was was doing wrong just as much as what I was doing right. I had to re-assess my expectations. So many ifs and buts, whys, hows, whos, whens, wheres..... virtually all the interrogatives I can think of I drilled my head into. I kept asking myself so many questions as if the answers to those questions would change the situation I was in at time. I knew there was no fixing to me, unless I was again with the one I truly love. My biggest question was: Was I truly loved?
I never thought I will actually get an answer to this question. I had a recurring thought that when Im old and grey, I will be on ny death bed, still asking the same question and wondering about the answer decades after. I felt that the answer to that question is what would complete my existence. The Omega to my Alpha.
It took a year to hear the answer... the answer that has always been there all along. The answer that I failed to recognized because I had a completely different expectation subconsciously. I've always based one's love by how much can be sacrificed to make me happy. How much effort will be put in to keep a promise. For each time things didnt turn out the way it was planned or how I wanted it, I always compared it to how I wouldve done it given the same situation. The only problem was... I was not in the same situation. I never was. Therefore, there was no way what I would think I wouldve done, could have been done. Simply because our situation and circumstances were different. And my expectations were completely off tangeant.
It took a year of the loneliest nights, and the hardest days with painful happy memories consuming me every single day realizing that I might have already lost the love of my life to finally recognize that love is never measured by the way I always thought it should be. Love is never absolute in the sense that different people love in different ways but even with this, it doesnt mean that they love any less than we do
. What I thought was a great love was even greater when I beagn to look at things from their perpective. The love that was being given to me was so much greater than what I had expected it to be. Much bigger that what I could even imagine for myself.
Little did I know that with every promise kept entailed a great sacrifice for their part. Every moment spent with me meant living another life. Every morning with me was a race to the sun. And every night shared together meant reaching for the stars without the moon shining. That every step taken with me was a leap over the water. I failed to recognize that every moment with me was truly all there was to keep, and yet I was given that moment just for us to be together...just to make me happy.
A year later, now older and hopefully wiser... I know better, after understanding what really happened and what went wrong. The only true measure of love can never be defined other than by one giving their very best. The best that they can and with the best that they have. The only unit of measurement for love is one's BEST! And in fact, when you are given their best, there is no longer any need to measure. Because truly, love should not be measured. Loving someonehas nothing to do with perfection. Contrary to this, love means being secure knowing that one's love for you is greater than your mistakes and failures. That when your shadow leaves at your darkest moments, you have their hand to hold until you finally find the light and still, you find them with you, next to you.. It is allowing room for mistakes and learning from them to be better. Not just as an individual but a better partner as well. Love is giving yourself in complete surrender trusting that you are loved the best way they know how. Love is believing what your heart has always known. Love is that feeling only understood by your heart and soul, only shared with that special special person .Love is setting aside questions as we follow where our heart leads us. Love is me and you, just us, believing in the promise of forever.
Cheers,
joyous =)
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