something as complicated as LOVE
LOVE hurts. It stings. It breaks our hearts. It makes us go crazy. It makes us do things we never thought we are capable of doing. But LOVE, also heals. It soothes our pain. It makes us happy. It gives us strength. It makes us do things beyond our own capability and capacity. It enables us to do sacrifices. It completes our life.
There are a lot of forms of love. You might have heard of Eros, Philos and Agape but I won't write about them specifically. I will write of love as far as how my heart remembers and feels of it. I will write of love as my soul knows it.
Every human being is capable of loving (and I strongly believe that every living creature does). It is a powerful emotion that set the universe in motion. It makes us do all good things. The only thing that makes things complicated is when we love selfishly. Our greatest challenge in this life is, how can we love unconditionally?
I felt love first when I was in the womb of my mother. Yeah, I don't remember so much of it except that whenever I see pregnant women touching their enlarged bellies with that smile, I always see my mother and me inside her. I could clearly remember how much she cared for me. Then I felt the first touch of love the moment I was laid down on my mother's side shortly after coming out of her womb. I experienced love that wrapped me in utmost comfort and security (that made me stop crying). I could remember that feeling being enveloped by her loving arms. I guess that's where hugs were derived. There is a deep longing in me wanting to be enveloped by those arms again. Because everytime I'm within her, I felt that certain feeling that makes me feel at ease. My mother's love. (Yeah, the love that saved Harry from You-Know-Who). The perfect example of love that is unconditional. That love that always makes me feel at peace amidst the unfairness of this world. Because it accepts me for who I am. And the great thing is, it is the same, it never changed after all these years.
Then, I came to know a different kind of love. A love that I often misunderstood. A love that I never recognized until I come into maturity. My father's love. My father has always been strict. I could remember writing "He is the toughest man I know, that is before I came to know Adolf Hitler." which is true. I have always feared my father. I've always feared that leather belt he used to wear. I am always cautious about the way I behave because I always want to be pleasing to him. I don't want him to be angry, much more be disappointed with me. So as much as possible, I want to do things with utmost perfection. There were times I do not understand, times I felt so rebellious inside. I was thinking I wish I could grow up fast so I could live on my own. I got tired of being reprimanded all over again. I never thought it would ever come a time that I would say I am grateful for being reprimanded nor for the lashes from that leather belt. But from that moment maturity sinked deep within me, I appreciated the kind of discipline my father gave to us. I will never be who I am now if not because of him. I wouldn't be able to distinguish right from wrong. And I begin to understand why people yell. It is because they care. So whenever my father shouts at me, I cry. And it's not because I fear him but because I know how much he loves me. He just have a different way of showing it.
I have three siblings-- an elder sister, a younger brother and our youngest sister. When we were young we were taught how to love each other. It is a must that when you're older, you have to give in to the younger ones (which sucked, by the way). It is not easy to give in. We always fight over toys, over ideas, over anything under the sun. We always wanted to be greater than the other. (That is why we end up counting lashes.) It is not easy being the one to understand. When we were growing up, I am closer to my elder sister because we just had eleven months gap. And people think we're twins because we got the same hair, clothes, bags and shoes. It was difficult to understand her especially that I instilled in my mind that it is not my responsibility to understand her. She should understand me because I am younger. We quarrel a lot. But when she had to go to school in the city, my heart was incredibly torn. It was then I realized how important she is. Because I never thought I would miss her so much. It was then that I felt our family is incomplete without her. I had to do her jobs and I realized it isn't easy to be her. To be the eldest in the house is difficult. But then, I learned a lot from it. Respect begets respect. It was also then that I became closer to my younger siblings. Though conflict arises every now and then, it made me more aware of my actions. I had to take care of them the way our eldest took care of them. If I couldn't be better, at least I can be good. And it is amazing how things suddenly becomes smooth and easy when we learn to understand, when we learn to give, when we put our loved ones first in everything we do. It only takes one person to give--a smile, a hug, a good word, a joke. And then they reciprocate. And the house is more homey than ever before. When someone is mad, (especially Papa) we could crack jokes easily and the tension is gone. As the years went by, I've seen my siblings better. I learned to appreciate them of what they have become. We've come to respect our differences. And we learned to understand each other better and love each other more. And though I always wanted to be with them, I just couldn't be. It hurt me when I left home because I knew they would be as deeply wounded as I would be. But when I saw in myself how much I loved them, I was able to make sacrifices. And the more I knew of sacrifice, the more I knew of love.
Then came friends. Friends are wingless angels sent from above to comfort you in greatest distress and to celebrate with you at times of success. Friends are also like family. In my 24 years of living, I have four bestfriends: Fragile, our eldest sister, Farah, my childhood bestfriend; Jean, my highschool bestfriend; and Glogie, my bestfriend for all seasons. They came at different times of my life and each of them have a great impact and had left me a part of them. And I will always be grateful for them in my life. Because they have been there during those times I could have been alone. I have shared with them secrets, I have shared them my dreams, I even have shared them things which I cannot tell my parents. When I was building up myself, they were actually helping me. Acceptance is such a sweet word. Only true friends accepts you for who you truly are. They see your flaws and they still care for you. And they always know when you are in trouble and saves you even when you have forgotten to shout out for help. There are a lot of people I consider friends. And they have different roles in my life. I am blessed to have come to know these people. Because I have learned from them a different kind of love. They have left a mark in my heart and they have a portion that stays with me forever.
And now, for the love that had always inflicted me with unmeasurable pain (haha), yeah, the love towards opposite sex. It's amazing how people fall in love. It's amazing how it starts with a simple crush and then grows into love and ends with you being greatly distressed (okay, with me). I've fallen in and out of love. I can remember being super happy and super sad. It's funny how I try to remember the feeling when I could almost hold it before like it had taken form. I could remember being hurt but it's hard to remember the pain. I have cried abundant tears because all those I loved didn't love me in return. The first one that made my heart skip a beat was the cutest boy in the class. I was in first year high school. He was neat and he had this hair that he used to flip with his fingers. He had cute eyes and a cute smile. And up to now, I feel fond of him. And so are the other ones that I fell in love with. I think that when something so intense as love, when being neutralized by time, it becomes fondness. There's no thing as you feel nothing. The heart is not a brain, it had no ability to forget. Unless, you fell in love with the idea of falling in love, that would seem to explain about people not feeling anything after some time. There were a lot of times I've had sleepless nights, I laughed, I cried, I felt there was a deep hole inside me, a lot of unexplainable feeling actually--all which I seem have no control, of which I had no choice but to feel. It was awful, I knew it. But I was grateful I've felt it. I mean, it is not everyday that you feel something special for one certain person. It is a gift to be in love. Likewise, it is a gift to get hurt. For the measure of how we love is actually by the amount of pain we can take, the risks we are willing to take and the fear we overcome for the sake of it . Though there are just somethings that aren't meant to be. And I am still grateful for all my not-meant-to-bes because I've learned how to be patient and to wait and eventually to understand what love truly is. I never regretted anything. After all, how can you even regret something that you yourself had no control of? You can only be grateful it came to you and be happy that it stayed with you for some time. Because the greatest lessons in life have always something to do with love.
I felt love that's why I knew love. I know the bliss as well as the pain that goes along with it. Love is the binding force that brings us all together... because the very foundation of our being is LOVE. We are created out of love by Our Almighty Father. Every wonderful thing here on earth is crafted in perfection because of His LOVE. And it is also of great LOVE that we are still living up to this moment. We are enjoying this life because Christ took the guilt of our sins and saved us by dying on the cross. Our God, came down from His throne and became Man to save us so we can live with Him in eternity because He loves us deeply.
It is because of LOVE and nothing more that we exist. And when we begin to realize, we understand why we love. God made mothers to show how He cares and how He loves us. The one that kisses our blues away. The one that holds us so closely that we may never hurt. A perfect example of a steadfast and unfailing love that He had been giving to us. Our God is that good to give us mothers. And not only that, He gave us fathers too. The one that tells us firmly what is good and what is right and just. The one that strikes us with rod and raises his voice when we go on the wrong way. God disciplines us through our fathers that we may differentiate the good from evil, so we may grow learning things that we may live our life righteously and uphold our values and virtues that He had taught us from the very beginning of time.. And He made us belong to a family so we may learn how to give importance the people we love. Because we are all made for each other. We belong to one FAMILY bound by one LOVE. He wants us to learn about relationships, on how to deal with other people, to love and accept no matter how different that person may be. He made us experience the joy and pain of loving that we may understand His love. It is His way of showing us how great we can be when we begin to love. Our love develops inside our home that we may be able to share it with to others. That kind of relationship we have at our very home is what we need in relating to everyone in God's home. We may have different cultures, different backgrounds, different beliefs and different principles, yet one fact is distinct-- we are all capable of loving and that's what makes us one and the same. We all belong to one FAMILY, and you will realize the truth behind this when we all have left this earth and go back to our Father. Henceforth, as we live in this earth, we must not fail to recognize the love we should have for each other. We need to live for each other. We need to love. We need to care. And we all have a responsibility-- to lead everyone into His Hands. And we can never do it without LOVE.. For what else causes one person to care?
No matter what kind of love it is that you give, what matters most is that you love. Even when you have fallen in love with money, power, fame, ideas and all those that kept you away from Him, you will learn something out of it. Though I pray that you begin to realize this before the end of time. We all have read it in the Scriptures, we know it, and yet our human weakness leads us to being a slave of this world that we fail to see God and feel our love for Him. Conflicts arise and hate comes to form when we love selfishly. When we refuse to see what God wants us to see. When we do not accept things which are not meant for us. When we do not give in to His plans for us. We tend to believe that we know what is best for us when the whole truth is, God knows what is best for us. Because He made us. He knows us and He had set His plans for us long before when we were yet in our mother's womb. The people around us are by no chance a coincidence we know, God gave them to us that we may learn, that He may manifest His love through us and through them. I hope it won't be too late for us to realize that people are more important than things. For the things we have in this world can't be with us in eternity. These are mere tools that God uses to test us how far we have learned in loving. And everytime we choose things over people, His own Heart bleeds for we never learned His ways. Jesus clearly said, we should gather up treasures in heaven. And with that, He meant loving God above all and loving other people as we love ourselves.
In whatever form, love is love. It stays forever in our hearts, it is what feeds our souls. The love that we give and the love that we receive never goes to waste. It is always passed on. It is what remains of us when we get out of our bodies. All forms of love that we felt from the very beginning of time leads to one-- GOD'S LOVE. That we may be able to understand its unfathomable depth and we may reciprocate despite our being unworthy. It is the only LOVE that never fails us.
Something as complicated as LOVE is not so complicated at all. GOD IS LOVE. It is that simple. And when we realize how beautiful and how great that LOVE is, we then know who we are and what on earth we are here for.
If you are reading this, I hope you feel in your heart that love that connects you to Him. Because that same love connects us all. And I pray that in this lifetime we may inflict more love on people. Even on people who did us wrong. It is what Christ's LOVE taught us. It is how we should live our lives. God bless us all. :)
There are a lot of forms of love. You might have heard of Eros, Philos and Agape but I won't write about them specifically. I will write of love as far as how my heart remembers and feels of it. I will write of love as my soul knows it.
Every human being is capable of loving (and I strongly believe that every living creature does). It is a powerful emotion that set the universe in motion. It makes us do all good things. The only thing that makes things complicated is when we love selfishly. Our greatest challenge in this life is, how can we love unconditionally?
I felt love first when I was in the womb of my mother. Yeah, I don't remember so much of it except that whenever I see pregnant women touching their enlarged bellies with that smile, I always see my mother and me inside her. I could clearly remember how much she cared for me. Then I felt the first touch of love the moment I was laid down on my mother's side shortly after coming out of her womb. I experienced love that wrapped me in utmost comfort and security (that made me stop crying). I could remember that feeling being enveloped by her loving arms. I guess that's where hugs were derived. There is a deep longing in me wanting to be enveloped by those arms again. Because everytime I'm within her, I felt that certain feeling that makes me feel at ease. My mother's love. (Yeah, the love that saved Harry from You-Know-Who). The perfect example of love that is unconditional. That love that always makes me feel at peace amidst the unfairness of this world. Because it accepts me for who I am. And the great thing is, it is the same, it never changed after all these years.
Then, I came to know a different kind of love. A love that I often misunderstood. A love that I never recognized until I come into maturity. My father's love. My father has always been strict. I could remember writing "He is the toughest man I know, that is before I came to know Adolf Hitler." which is true. I have always feared my father. I've always feared that leather belt he used to wear. I am always cautious about the way I behave because I always want to be pleasing to him. I don't want him to be angry, much more be disappointed with me. So as much as possible, I want to do things with utmost perfection. There were times I do not understand, times I felt so rebellious inside. I was thinking I wish I could grow up fast so I could live on my own. I got tired of being reprimanded all over again. I never thought it would ever come a time that I would say I am grateful for being reprimanded nor for the lashes from that leather belt. But from that moment maturity sinked deep within me, I appreciated the kind of discipline my father gave to us. I will never be who I am now if not because of him. I wouldn't be able to distinguish right from wrong. And I begin to understand why people yell. It is because they care. So whenever my father shouts at me, I cry. And it's not because I fear him but because I know how much he loves me. He just have a different way of showing it.
I have three siblings-- an elder sister, a younger brother and our youngest sister. When we were young we were taught how to love each other. It is a must that when you're older, you have to give in to the younger ones (which sucked, by the way). It is not easy to give in. We always fight over toys, over ideas, over anything under the sun. We always wanted to be greater than the other. (That is why we end up counting lashes.) It is not easy being the one to understand. When we were growing up, I am closer to my elder sister because we just had eleven months gap. And people think we're twins because we got the same hair, clothes, bags and shoes. It was difficult to understand her especially that I instilled in my mind that it is not my responsibility to understand her. She should understand me because I am younger. We quarrel a lot. But when she had to go to school in the city, my heart was incredibly torn. It was then I realized how important she is. Because I never thought I would miss her so much. It was then that I felt our family is incomplete without her. I had to do her jobs and I realized it isn't easy to be her. To be the eldest in the house is difficult. But then, I learned a lot from it. Respect begets respect. It was also then that I became closer to my younger siblings. Though conflict arises every now and then, it made me more aware of my actions. I had to take care of them the way our eldest took care of them. If I couldn't be better, at least I can be good. And it is amazing how things suddenly becomes smooth and easy when we learn to understand, when we learn to give, when we put our loved ones first in everything we do. It only takes one person to give--a smile, a hug, a good word, a joke. And then they reciprocate. And the house is more homey than ever before. When someone is mad, (especially Papa) we could crack jokes easily and the tension is gone. As the years went by, I've seen my siblings better. I learned to appreciate them of what they have become. We've come to respect our differences. And we learned to understand each other better and love each other more. And though I always wanted to be with them, I just couldn't be. It hurt me when I left home because I knew they would be as deeply wounded as I would be. But when I saw in myself how much I loved them, I was able to make sacrifices. And the more I knew of sacrifice, the more I knew of love.
Then came friends. Friends are wingless angels sent from above to comfort you in greatest distress and to celebrate with you at times of success. Friends are also like family. In my 24 years of living, I have four bestfriends: Fragile, our eldest sister, Farah, my childhood bestfriend; Jean, my highschool bestfriend; and Glogie, my bestfriend for all seasons. They came at different times of my life and each of them have a great impact and had left me a part of them. And I will always be grateful for them in my life. Because they have been there during those times I could have been alone. I have shared with them secrets, I have shared them my dreams, I even have shared them things which I cannot tell my parents. When I was building up myself, they were actually helping me. Acceptance is such a sweet word. Only true friends accepts you for who you truly are. They see your flaws and they still care for you. And they always know when you are in trouble and saves you even when you have forgotten to shout out for help. There are a lot of people I consider friends. And they have different roles in my life. I am blessed to have come to know these people. Because I have learned from them a different kind of love. They have left a mark in my heart and they have a portion that stays with me forever.
And now, for the love that had always inflicted me with unmeasurable pain (haha), yeah, the love towards opposite sex. It's amazing how people fall in love. It's amazing how it starts with a simple crush and then grows into love and ends with you being greatly distressed (okay, with me). I've fallen in and out of love. I can remember being super happy and super sad. It's funny how I try to remember the feeling when I could almost hold it before like it had taken form. I could remember being hurt but it's hard to remember the pain. I have cried abundant tears because all those I loved didn't love me in return. The first one that made my heart skip a beat was the cutest boy in the class. I was in first year high school. He was neat and he had this hair that he used to flip with his fingers. He had cute eyes and a cute smile. And up to now, I feel fond of him. And so are the other ones that I fell in love with. I think that when something so intense as love, when being neutralized by time, it becomes fondness. There's no thing as you feel nothing. The heart is not a brain, it had no ability to forget. Unless, you fell in love with the idea of falling in love, that would seem to explain about people not feeling anything after some time. There were a lot of times I've had sleepless nights, I laughed, I cried, I felt there was a deep hole inside me, a lot of unexplainable feeling actually--all which I seem have no control, of which I had no choice but to feel. It was awful, I knew it. But I was grateful I've felt it. I mean, it is not everyday that you feel something special for one certain person. It is a gift to be in love. Likewise, it is a gift to get hurt. For the measure of how we love is actually by the amount of pain we can take, the risks we are willing to take and the fear we overcome for the sake of it . Though there are just somethings that aren't meant to be. And I am still grateful for all my not-meant-to-bes because I've learned how to be patient and to wait and eventually to understand what love truly is. I never regretted anything. After all, how can you even regret something that you yourself had no control of? You can only be grateful it came to you and be happy that it stayed with you for some time. Because the greatest lessons in life have always something to do with love.
I felt love that's why I knew love. I know the bliss as well as the pain that goes along with it. Love is the binding force that brings us all together... because the very foundation of our being is LOVE. We are created out of love by Our Almighty Father. Every wonderful thing here on earth is crafted in perfection because of His LOVE. And it is also of great LOVE that we are still living up to this moment. We are enjoying this life because Christ took the guilt of our sins and saved us by dying on the cross. Our God, came down from His throne and became Man to save us so we can live with Him in eternity because He loves us deeply.
It is because of LOVE and nothing more that we exist. And when we begin to realize, we understand why we love. God made mothers to show how He cares and how He loves us. The one that kisses our blues away. The one that holds us so closely that we may never hurt. A perfect example of a steadfast and unfailing love that He had been giving to us. Our God is that good to give us mothers. And not only that, He gave us fathers too. The one that tells us firmly what is good and what is right and just. The one that strikes us with rod and raises his voice when we go on the wrong way. God disciplines us through our fathers that we may differentiate the good from evil, so we may grow learning things that we may live our life righteously and uphold our values and virtues that He had taught us from the very beginning of time.. And He made us belong to a family so we may learn how to give importance the people we love. Because we are all made for each other. We belong to one FAMILY bound by one LOVE. He wants us to learn about relationships, on how to deal with other people, to love and accept no matter how different that person may be. He made us experience the joy and pain of loving that we may understand His love. It is His way of showing us how great we can be when we begin to love. Our love develops inside our home that we may be able to share it with to others. That kind of relationship we have at our very home is what we need in relating to everyone in God's home. We may have different cultures, different backgrounds, different beliefs and different principles, yet one fact is distinct-- we are all capable of loving and that's what makes us one and the same. We all belong to one FAMILY, and you will realize the truth behind this when we all have left this earth and go back to our Father. Henceforth, as we live in this earth, we must not fail to recognize the love we should have for each other. We need to live for each other. We need to love. We need to care. And we all have a responsibility-- to lead everyone into His Hands. And we can never do it without LOVE.. For what else causes one person to care?
No matter what kind of love it is that you give, what matters most is that you love. Even when you have fallen in love with money, power, fame, ideas and all those that kept you away from Him, you will learn something out of it. Though I pray that you begin to realize this before the end of time. We all have read it in the Scriptures, we know it, and yet our human weakness leads us to being a slave of this world that we fail to see God and feel our love for Him. Conflicts arise and hate comes to form when we love selfishly. When we refuse to see what God wants us to see. When we do not accept things which are not meant for us. When we do not give in to His plans for us. We tend to believe that we know what is best for us when the whole truth is, God knows what is best for us. Because He made us. He knows us and He had set His plans for us long before when we were yet in our mother's womb. The people around us are by no chance a coincidence we know, God gave them to us that we may learn, that He may manifest His love through us and through them. I hope it won't be too late for us to realize that people are more important than things. For the things we have in this world can't be with us in eternity. These are mere tools that God uses to test us how far we have learned in loving. And everytime we choose things over people, His own Heart bleeds for we never learned His ways. Jesus clearly said, we should gather up treasures in heaven. And with that, He meant loving God above all and loving other people as we love ourselves.
In whatever form, love is love. It stays forever in our hearts, it is what feeds our souls. The love that we give and the love that we receive never goes to waste. It is always passed on. It is what remains of us when we get out of our bodies. All forms of love that we felt from the very beginning of time leads to one-- GOD'S LOVE. That we may be able to understand its unfathomable depth and we may reciprocate despite our being unworthy. It is the only LOVE that never fails us.
Something as complicated as LOVE is not so complicated at all. GOD IS LOVE. It is that simple. And when we realize how beautiful and how great that LOVE is, we then know who we are and what on earth we are here for.
If you are reading this, I hope you feel in your heart that love that connects you to Him. Because that same love connects us all. And I pray that in this lifetime we may inflict more love on people. Even on people who did us wrong. It is what Christ's LOVE taught us. It is how we should live our lives. God bless us all. :)
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