True love is…

… that which has emerged from
the crucible of loving. It comes only after the
roughness of the self gets chiseled, scraped,
burnt, and polished. It’s a scary thought to learn
that true love demands an almost total loss of self
for the beloved.

If lovers realize on their wedding day the
actual weight of their marriage vows, they’d turn
around and gallop away. But on their wedding day,
lovers are often hardly aware of what’s going on. Most
couples take a few years to wake up, others as early
as the second year. No matter, the ‘polishing’ in the
crucible goes on ’till death do us part’. If ‘true
love’ takes over’, heaven descends to earth; if it
doesn’t, hell ascends.

Beauty objectively magnetizes the ‘eye’. In nature, in
art, in objects we see — indeed, how much more
physical beauty. Yet, like I’ve been telling you,
quoting from ‘The Little Prince’ , ‘it’s only with the
heart that one can rightly see; what’s essential is
invisible to the eye.’ Even in art, this is true,
right?

Think then about the heart’s secret dreams,
wants, desires — these are what make us focus on that
one person who could be extremely attractive or
someone whom no one perhaps would think beautiful. It could
happen in an instant or in a few more meetings. The
‘chemistry’ or the mutuality could also spark both and
strike with the ‘pain’ of romantic longing in an
instant. But it may or may not last.

Romance is not all of love — it’s what gives love the
moonlight glow or shimmer in the sky. It’s the first
breath of spring, the soft vapor of twilight, the
purple brush of dawn on still sleepy eyes, the pink
death of day at sunset, the soft quiver of a first
kiss  — I could go on and on. But none of the above
is love. Love is all other things like not getting
home on time because of traffic and getting a kiss
from the beloved instead of a bark or a sulk, or a
baby suddenly breaking out with a rash just when you
have dressed up for a romantic dinner, or late at
night when you’re supposed to snuggle in bed, the wife
of husband suddenly feels bad and you have to rush to
ER, etc….

Intimacies actually strengthen love. They shouldn’t
start it though. It should happen naturally when love
asks for it, when tenderness draws an aching to be one
in its deepest most complete, to reach and unite to
the core of one’s being. It’s then when you feel the
universe has  contracted and you have it in your
palms, your heart, your mind — that’s the beloved and
you as one. The power is quite unimaginable!

‘Love is not a feeling; it is a state of being.’
True it begins with a spark, an attraction and it
should grow into passion and desire (LFD?) but soon,
it must cool down into a warm glow like an ember
throwing off light, sustaining everything else in you
and the loved one, all of you and all of her– your
lives, your worlds – including but only at times
passion and desire. That’s why it demands time or
having to know the desired one in every way. If
everything else revealed or unraveled lifts you or the
other up, then love has been ignited, and it must soon
begin to blossom into a flame. But if even the
slightest gesture drags you down, it should be a
warning of danger.

A note about pain – if it comes with longing to be one
with the beloved yet barred or unreciprocated
(un-corresponded), it is mere romance and stays as
such, unless of course that which deters fulfillment
is overcome or resolved. The nature of love is not
pain but joy, bliss, and peace, of course. Like most
journeys, which love is — a journey to ultimate
fulfillment — bumps during the ride should only be
there as challenges that will carry the relationship
to a higher level. But if pain is constant, then I
believe it is mere obsession that stifles or even
strangles love to death.

Because the nature of love is joy and bliss, it finds
natural ground in friendship. Even in deep attraction,
the meeting should be of cordiality  — of closeness
yet of respect, of tenderness yet of delicateness.
But love in order to survive has to rise into sublime
friendship,.

You see desire and passion or that pain that grips you
in the guts would not help lovers cope with life’s
realities. Early on in engagement or even in
courtship, signs of a breakdown could rear any one of
passion’s ugly guises. It could explode as jealousy,
possessiveness, and neediness. Only a relationship
that understanding, caring, and selflessness has
deepened could overcome the destructive nature of
passion.

Love then is nothing less than how St. Paul has
described it, EVERYWORD of it. Love is losing one’s
self to the other, merging two halves into one. It
does appear like a struggle to the summit but if
shared in loving oneness, it ‘s all sweetness.

(Excerpts from letters exchanged between a friend, who is in perpetual agony about lost loves, and me).

 

Lessons from Divo

Divo showing off

Divo gazes at me, his marble-eyes translucent as still water with no obvious thought in them. I am scooping teaspoons of his tuna meal from a can, crooning, “Wait, Divo. Good boy.” When I scrape bits of the meal stuck in the can, he knows I’m about ready to bring his plate to his feeding corner. It is then when he leaps onto the kitchen ledge, creeps close to my right shoulder intimately as if he would give me a kiss or whisper to me. I feel both though he expertly leaves a space where my heart expands. We repeat this ritual in the morning for his dinner. We have both grown with it—he, into a sleek 12-pound tabby, I, into a cat-lover, a commitment undeterred by shifting seasons, moods, and the lure of a lake spa.

If Divo were human, his gesture would most likely be a crisp, ‘thanks’ the first time that is. He would take later feedings for granted as if it were his right and I am obliged to give it. I could shore up my withering self esteem from an increasing draught by invoking the well of unconditional commitment. I may even perhaps rise in spirit and feed him like I would a heavenly master. Still deep in that chamber between beats of my agonist and antagonist, I know I would long for something more.

Word books pair ‘gratitude’ and ‘appreciation’ as twins. I have never really thought about their difference until after months of feeding Divo. His never-without-‘thanks’ gesture—giving back to me what I give him—has heaped value on my task of feeding him. This thought then emerged: Gratitude may end with an act; appreciation begets a chain of acts that could lead to transformation.

I was not aware this idea had changed me like an invisible dye until Juliet threw up her hands one day in disgust with what she thought an absurd excuse for turning down a few dinner invitations because I couldn’t pass up a not-quite-kiss. But she calmed down counting the tasks I have taken on in our jobs—as part of who Divo has turned me into is as committed at work, valuing what is given by doing more. My constancy, simplicity and perhaps now, devotion to my duty because of his appreciation, have turned priceless.  I am transformed.

When an editor thanks me for a piece I submit, for instance, I thank her instead—as I have had Aleesha in each issue that she accepted my article. For me it is no mere bouncing of the word “thanks”, I once wrote Susan, another editor, as that which is given—the opportunity to write—if appreciated is enlarged in meaning and significance. I said in that email, as I did to Aleesha in much the same words, that “my writing is blooming because of the value you’ve been giving it.”

That exchange with Susan called to mind how an editor of a small daily in Manila wrote me back when I thanked him for putting an interview I wrote in the front page, boxed it for prominence, and even added on a cartoon that pleased my subject. “Your letter brought on smiles in the ‘boiler room’, and not steam but cool rain drenches us. You turned a regular assignment into a celebration,” he said. But it was I not the ‘boiler guys’ who doubled in my puny height because of how they treated my piece.

I walk lightly yet I feel full these days. I tend to smile easily as well. Yet, when I travel, worry over who would feed Divo weighs on my baggage. It is needless really. Gary who takes my place even brings in his kids who walk Divo in the courtyard, scattering laughter that rise like balloons to the corridors where doors of our suites are lined. Chances are Marie who hears them would reach for her Irish wool cardigan, limp to the corridor, and from the railing catch those candied squeals Divo brings on. Imagining the scene enlarging from bundles of wordless appreciation tossed back and forth, I then would snuggle in my plane seat and let sleep steal in.

By Alegria Imperial as published in timelessspirit.com