I was drenched in rain, onboard an FX taxi that found itself sliding down the EDSA-Shaw flyover, when I thought of Paolo Coelho's Eleven Minutes and how he said that we often intertwine love with pain when the former brings only wonderful things, beautiful moments.
At that point, I remembered one of our retreat facilitators last March. Sharing her own life journey as she told us to embrace and own our stories, she mentioned how God blessed her to fall in love again after a failed relationship a couple of years before.
That got me thinking, maybe that's why we equate love with pain, because we see it as an entitlement rather than as a blessing. When you feel entitled to receive love and experience it, you find yourself terribly frustrated when you don't have it. When you lose love, you feel devastated. As you wait for love, you wrestle with impatience.
In my heart of hearts, I want to believe this. That love is a blessing and not an entitlement. That way, you get to treasure every waking moment with that special someone... because he is a gift, not something you've earned and can earn again. That way, you forget to account for things that he does or fails to do... simply because you feel no need to.
I know this is way easier said than done. And once you've known pain or have come to know love through pain, relationships can easily turn from enjoying that gift to sustaining it. And then love does become a battlefield. You end up scarred yet again... bleeding, fighting, gasping to survive.
Perhaps nothing really is permament in our mortal lives. Everything is temporary... even love may be fleeting. But in spite of this, if you see love as a blessing, then as I always say, the pain may be no less real, but at the very least you're left with something to hold on to. That the love you were gifted with may have found its way back to the One above but that in His time, in His infinite wisdom and goodness, another blessing of the same skin might be yours.
To you, remember this, I take you as a blessing. Only through that can I tide the lingering pain, the pain of finding ourselves in no less than perfect circumstances. Because I choose to see the wonderful gift that you are... my flaws, your flaws and all.
“Pain and suffering are used to justify the only thing that should bring only joy: love.” - Paolo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
"In my heart of hearts, I want to believe this. That love is a blessing and not an entitlement."
ReplyDeleteAye, there's the rub, Darc.
So many of us wail and moan about not being loved, taking it as a given that we are actually worthy of being loved.
We who think we are God's gift miss the point entirely : it is love that is the gift, not us. We are but vessels for it.
I too have been thinking about the connection of love and pain the past few days. Maybe it's because of the rain.
ReplyDeleteI come from a quite different vantage point though. I feel that most of us could only write of love through pain, because it is the easier way to have it; happiness, I find, is such an elusive thing, even on paper.
Of course, you're talking about something more than just articulation, and this is where we completely part ways. I understand where you're coming from, but only as an abstraction. I don't think I have enough experience to really, really get it.
Raymond Carver also comes to mind. I mean, what do we really talk about, when we talk about love?
yang ulan talaga na yan, ang daming nagagawa. haha
ReplyDeleteayoko ng dumaan ng EDSA-Shaw flyover. loz
ReplyDeletekakanta na lang ako. anong gusto mong song friend? :)
ReplyDelete@ruddie: yep, it takes a lot of convincing especially when you've been conditioned that love is something you will find. ultimately, it's not about us :)
ReplyDelete@manech: true! it's easier to write about love through pain. i hear you on this one big time... or maybe we're just emo. lol :P
and then darc sings: i wanna know what love is, i want you to show me... hehe
@arkin: oo nga, nagkasakit na at lahat... nabaliw na ang mga tao. lol
ReplyDelete@nimmy: ahaha, actually! si manong box-type sa isa kong post, sa EDSA-Shaw flyover din iyong episode na iyon eh :P
@jepoy: um, barbie girl by aqua! lol
no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. that is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.
ReplyDelete-maria's diary, eleven minutes
(this line is still on the draft section of my phone, something to remind me about freedom and loses. and now that you mentioned the book i forgot who borrowed mine. hahaha )
but this ain't applicable to you naman... in love love love. lol :P
ReplyDeleteTo love is to give another the right to inflict pain to you. For one cannot wholly love without the requisite of vulnerability. So love, like it's the first, and live like it's the last.
ReplyDeleteWe find ourselves barren after every failure in love's labyrinthine swells, only because despite the lessons we learn from our own histories, we continually try and unlearn the same things so we can, fully, completely, fall again.
hmmm, i'm not really comfortable with the idea of loving as giving someone else the right to hurt you. when you're vulnerable, shouldn't love earn you mutual respect? find strength in each other?
ReplyDeletei'm at a loss for words darc.
ReplyDelete"To you, remember this, I take you as a blessing. Only through that can I tide the lingering pain, the pain of finding ourselves in no less than perfect circumstances." :-< oh well.
so, may bago bang chismis? lols
ay wala naman. ikaw ano chismis? :P
ReplyDeleteRelationships are always difficult I think, especially when passion obfuscates reason. But to feel (yes, even pain) is a gift, notwithstanding that it sometimes feels like a curse.
ReplyDeleteI love how you write. Kinda reminds me of myself if you don't mind me saying. :-)
http://ficklecattle.blogspot.com/
i like that, to feel is a gift :)
ReplyDelete