Repost: Of Love and Moving On

by Silvertongue

Of Love and Moving on
by Joscar Malacaman
First Published: UP CURSOR’s Monitor February  2010
Last Edited: July 14, 2011

“When it comes, just grab it with both hands and never let go.”

This is going to be the seventh time that I’ve decided to rewrite this article from the top. I find it strange that a wordsmith, such as myself, can’t seem to express what he wants to say. Such is the nature of love; it is a feeling that defies words and definitions as if it has a mind of its own. I have often written about love in my poems and it is one of the most beautiful things to write about. It captures so much of human experience and emotions that just the thought of it can be enough to drive a person mad with ecstasy or despair. I asked myself, however, if was I the right person to write about love. After all, I’ve never entered a romantic relationship. It is at this point that I realized that love goes beyond relationships; it goes beyond labels and meaning. I realized that love is, indeed, undefinable.

Love transcends the different layers of human emotions; it permeates through the different phases of human experience. It’s something that’s not easy to write about because it’s different for everyone and to generalize would do love a great injustice. Such a perfect idea should not be caged in imperfect words. Love is something that should be experienced in order to be understood and even then it is only that exact experience that you’ll understand. For me, it is like poetry which is not meant to be simply read. Instead, it invites the reader to be completely immersed in its every aspect; drowning in that faint yet powerful sensory journey. With that being said, I cannot write about love in general; I can only write about my love and nothing else but that.

It would seem strange that I am having trouble writing this article just as it would seem peculiar that after 8 months, I’m still having trouble moving on. This is probably because I dislike the phrase: ‘moving on’. For me, it is the anti-thesis of love because in truth where can you move on from love. One may say that we don’t move on from love but rather we move on from the object of our love. To that I reply with a question: “Is it possible to separate the one we love from love itself?”. I say this because as I was writing about love, deep inside I knew that I was writing about a single person and no longer just the idea in general. At this point, I’d like to admit that there were many before whom I loved and I’ve moved on from those experiences albeit with great struggle. Time has been a forceful agent of this phenomenon and it would take a great love to win against Chronos, himself.

How I wish that I’m capable of such love; capable of being able to embrace the excruciating pain of loneliness (although we are never alone); of being able to spurn the compromises that time sets before us. After all, compromise is the enemy of desire which is the very essence of love. Love doesn’t compromise, it doesn’t say: “Pwede na ‘to” and thus, when we learn to compromise our love dies down but it can still be built anew. This is not necessarily, a good or bad thing but it has become a necessity in the world we live in; the same world that sought to define the undefinable; the same world which consistently tries to define love.

Yet, love is stubborn that way and even in its most painful forms, love remains beautiful and alluring if one only dared to keep their eyes on it. It is the kind of pain that allows you to smile genuinely despite the tears; like mothers smiling upon their newly born babies even though they have been literally torn. In the process of labor, they might scream and shout in pain about how much they hate their husbands and that they didn’t want this pregnancy to happen but deep inside lies that love for their child that enables them to carry on. Such pure and uncompromising love allows them to be an inch within death and still smile and laugh and remain in love.

How I wish I am also capable of such love. To love and not seek mastery over it but rather to embrace it despite its thorns and still be able to smile. For there is no love without pain. There has always been pain when love is involved because it is the greatest paradox of life. It is the finding of one’s self in another and in time they will come at odds with each other and thus, sunder the souls that are in love.

My soul has been sundered but then I’d have it no other way. This is despite the fact that I know that time will eventually get the best of me and I will grow weary yet how I desire to never be weary. Such is life’s greatest crime: to put immortal love into the hearts of fragile creatures such as us. We may never be able to do love justice but there is no shame in trying. The world will continue remind us that we must keep order and that we must love another in order to maintain that order. It is, however, in the chaos of my heart where I am closest to understanding love. It is in chaos where I find it. For the world has no hold where there are no rules and time has no hold over the eternal. I hear it whisper when there is dead silence and it bids me to tell you…

“When it comes, grab it with both hands and never let go.”

- end -

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