Almost All About Love*

It is the subject of the million topics from all countries and cultures all over the world as well as of poetry, telenovelas, homilies, commercials, advertisement, television talk shows and books. Especially during the so-called Love Month and especially tomorrow, Valentine's Day.

I do not intend to exhaust the topic of love but I just would like to openly emphasize that : “The purpose of life is to learn how to love”. However good or troublesome, love and life are very private things to confess or to discuss, others may say.

First of all, everybody needs love regardless of profession, belief, race, age, nationality or creed : newborns (including those who are still in their mothers’ womb), politicians (including their supporters and publicists), the priest who solemnized our marriage, the Mangyans and the land grabbers, the farmers and the loan sharks, the fishermen and the pirates, those working in the flesh trade and their pimps, herbalists and health professionals, beggars and almsgivers near the cathedral’s main door and even those who sell flowers at Dangwa and their clients, including the room boy of the hotel where we spent the night with our loved ones on V-Day. Including the waiters in the restaurants where we are having a date.

On a personal note, now I can comprehend why my wife is still madly in love with me. She loves me despite the awful, stupid, mean, crazy, bad and selfish things that I do. She loves me even when we fight over not brushing my teeth when I go to sleep. To tell you, I do not exactly wish to compare my wife to God but like God, her love for me is unconditional. And because of this, now I already learn how brush my teeth three times a day and even floss at least twice every month. Like my God, my wife does not love me because I am handsome (truly I am!) neither because I am good or nice but simply because I do love her too. She somehow made many changes in my life. Like my God, my wife does not need those positive qualities of me (especially my being handsome, if I may repeat) in order to love me. Not even when I lie (repeatedly) about my looks!

Seriously, like our beloved wives, God loves us no matter what. “The purpose of life is to learn how to love” , according to one writer on spirituality named Thomas Hart, author of “Hidden Spring : The Spiritual Dimension of Therapy”. Loving is not a skill we are born with even if you are as cute as mine when you are a toddler. Loving is a skill we must learn,… like,- you’ve guessed it right, lying about your (self-proclaimed) handsomeness. No matter how we lie sometimes, we must learn how to love.

We learn love by being loved. None of us has been or is loved perfectly. Like all of us, my family is not perfect, my friends are not perfect,- so do my bosses, my children, my neighbors, my community, etc. That is why after three years of being engaged, I immediately (during our time it was!) married my wife because I do not want to waste my youth and time or my whole life finding and waiting for a perfect woman or a perfect love. I was thirty then but we didn’t let loose the still imperfect love that me and wife are sharing for more than eighteen years now.

From “being loved” let us go to “by loving”. Like blogging, loving takes time and practice. Mistakes (in my case it’s my grammar and my speling) naturally come our way. But I did not give up on loving (read : blogging) just because of those errors. Up to now, only few relatives, friends and co-workers read my blog. Well, that is based only on the lack of on-line comments from my posts. But I would not give up as long as there are people who would tell me they are my readers but finding it hard to post a comment. As in blogging or writing and in loving as well, mistakes or frustrations are to be expected. And not unlike blogging (at least for a trying hard blogger like me), loving is so important to human life. Loving is life’s essence. Love is so wonderful and well worth the effort and time, troubles and mistakes in order for us to learn and do it well.

“Love one another” is Jesus’ supreme command. He said it over and over again like a broken record in a variety of stories and images because He knew how hard it was.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all, even if loving is most of the time a “dis-ease”…

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(*With apologies to the musical program over Bambi-FM with (almost) the same title. Photo from www.gadget4all.com)