THIS IS how it feels to be in love.
You become tireless, or at least you make yourself think you’re tireless. Notions of boundaries and limits become unthinkable; all you think is go, go, go, because now you have a purpose and there’s no time to doubt yourself, because this is something bigger than you. Rest is no longer taken for granted; you rest because you need it, not because you’re sick of what you’re doing.
Nothing that’s worth anything is easy. You start to feel like you have something to offer the world again. Because you know, firsthand, how it feels to scramble for a foothold in a bustling world eager to show you it doesn’t need you. You seize the opportunity gratefully. You set out again, and not even to feed your ego—because you’re in love and optimistic, you tell the world, no, you might not need me, but I have love, and everyone can do with love.
You start devoting yourself to ideas and people you believe in. You don’t hesitate to tell people you appreciate them; you say “thank you” and “sorry” more often. You see good in everyone—yet you appreciate gray areas more and more. There are seven billion people in the world—seven billion pasts, and even more experiences and lessons learned. Who are you to say who’s right and who’s wrong? Everyone has his or her own story. You’re one in seven billion, yet it feels like you can listen to every story the world has to offer, because you’ve realized that one of the most viral diseases on this planet is thinking you don’t have enough time to listen.
You’re dying to tell every story you’ve heard, not because you’re a gossip, but because you learned a lot from these stories and you think that everyone else deserves to know them, too. You tell them to friends, to strangers on the street and on the Internet, and secretly you hope the people in these stories meet each other, because who knows who might get together and experience a great love; who’d click instantly and form an inseparable bond; who’d become adversaries and begin to discover more about themselves and each other in their quest to become better; and who’d smile, exchange names, and go along their merry ways, story troves untouched and dusty.
You realize that that last one usually makes the saddest tales.
But you’re only human, and you make mistakes, you get tired. Sometimes you whine, you complain, you become self-centered again. Life becomes routine and you almost fall back into your old self. But because you’re in love, you start forgetting yourself again. It’s love that drives you to go out and chase stories, know people, overcome your self-doubts. It’s love that makes you feel alive again.
People debate whether it’s harder to fall in love with ideas or with people. You say it’s hard to fall in love, period. You used to wonder why people even bothered with it when all the aftermath you can see is tears and rejection. But when you yourself fell into it, you understood. Love doesn’t see the future. The heart is not concerned with consequences. It lives in the moment, muffles the blunt reminders of the mind. In a time where spontaneity is a luxury, love becomes one, too.
But you fell in love with life all over again, and it took you this long to find it. Now you’re ready to fight for it if you have to. And you will.
Frances Josephine E. Espeso, 19, is taking journalism at the University of the Philippines Diliman after shifting from chemistry.