L.A. (Live Away, Leave A-Way!)

Millennials and the Mystery Called Love

Being a millennial myself, I have been caught in the sweet poison of a happily ever-after syndrome in the phenomenon called love. Let's face it; we had too much drama circulating in our veins due to the television shows, novels and movies which were heavily romanticized to fit the tastes of the youth.

I have nothing but good words for love in its context, but I have nothing constructive to say in the matter I may perceive it. If you happen to be a millennial like me, you may end up seeing love between two polar opposites: a fairy-tale in the making or a nightmare coming to haunt your life.

I feel so happy that I got to experience courting someone I like face to face, rather than showering them with a buffet of sweet talk in Facebook. All the worse, I am also guilty of courting someone via phone and text messages as well. You see, we end up trying to emulate love as a many splendor thing by adorning it with lucrative figures of speech and wallet-breaking gifts only to exaggerate what is simple by its definition. Love, simply is love.

I would like to borrow the definition of love through Wikipedia, "the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another." By simply taking out the fancy date, gifts, honey-coated words and hot sex, love is simply a good morning kiss to your partner's forehead, the gentle hug in the afternoon and the intimate conversations you have at night after a long and grueling day. Love is simply being there for someone, wishing her all the best in the world, putting her above your welfare and it is definitely more than torrid kissing and being tied up in a chair while banging the night away.

Being fed with the illusion of a happy ending and the nightmarish struggles of a relationship places some of us to believe in love in the extremes of definitions: a wonderful experience or a memory worth burying alive, if I should say so myself. Ergo, the proliferation of bitter-quoted memes, "hugot lines," and pick-up lines came about, flooding our Facebook Newsfeed faster than a flash flood in Manila. I believe that an exaggeration of something beautiful in its own simple self would take a toll for the worse. It's like bombarding a simple and beautiful girl with make-up, turning her into a different persona. Perhaps we have twisted the definition of love too much; maybe we became too cynical, maybe we are being too gullible with the promise of forever minutes after actually meeting someone for the first time or maybe we have embraced the motto of a bitter love-struck person beyond compare, "Walang Forever!"

I would like to end with my personal definition of love, courtesy of the Holy Bible:

"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

Let's drop all the complication, drama, delusion, masquerade, bitterness and fantasy. Love is simply, love. It is something not meant to be complex or detrimental in the first place. Maybe we can start looking at love beyond the superficial and clichéd norms imposed by our society, exacerbated by media and reinforce by our era.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+13