can love songs be re-used? 

this is one song from a different life, from a different time, from a different kind of love. but it’s a truly beautiful song with the simplest meaning to offer that i couldn’t simply keep it in the past - valentine’s 2001, in familiar casual cursive penmanship, on meticulously arranged textured paper, completely by hand.

i didn’t keep the card, but i’ll always have the melodies, laced with a declaration of my first love and a dedication to my last love.

It’s all about our love
So shall it be forever
Neverending

After all this time
After all is said and done

We have seen some suffering, baby
It hasn’t always been perfect

After all this time
After all is said and done

Darling, we know it
Whatever may come

We can get through it
As if it’s just begun

It’s all about our love
So shall it be forever
Neverending

-Sade (All About Our Love) 

 

 

the cab driver took an unusual but scenic route home last night and it sparked a pang of distant familiarity. these places we passed, looked just like they used to when it was the centre of my life. preserved with it were all these memories that i seemed to have stowed away, never intending to access again. i don’t know why, upon closer inspection they weren’t really that bad. it wasn’t even that long ago.

then why do i feel so disconnected to an indentity i had once owned? retracing my steps to the sleeping skyscrapers and beautifully lit waterfront felt like i was watching a movie. if only these walls could speak, they say. well it did. the old colonial hotel whispered as we sped past, taunting me to remember. so i let myself go for a moment only to recollect what it felt like to be neither here nor there again, like an aimless cloud upon a drifting zephyr.

but eventually as we rolled onto more comforting streets, i put a lid on the flashback and decided that one day, i’ll have to return to these places. just not now. just not yet.

i think the most popular 3 worded phrase in the world has been truly overused in so many ways that it has drastically cheapened its meaning. 

to many, hearing someone say ‘i love you’ isn’t as amazing and heartwarming as the first time your teenage sweetheart ever nervously gushed, two weeks into holding your hand and walking you home, without ever fully realising the implications of the expression. 

the more we learn the value of ‘i love you’, the more we hand it out like leaflets of hair treatment promotions from the salon just around the corner. sure, there’s always the occasional instance when your heart swells with immense adoration and you might just mean what you say. but let’s be frank here people, does it always mean as much when you punctuate a text with it, write it in a card or flood your lover’s facebook wall? most times what we really mean is ‘love ya!’ which is irrefutably a completely different thing altogether.

on the other hand, i think what we don’t say enough (if at all) is ‘i believe in you.’ four remarkably powerful words that could change life as we know it. an official vote of confidence, a mark of trust and most importantly a show of faith. and faith, my friends, as we have seen from the demonstration of religion, is more powerful than what most of us can comprehend. 

of course, the most important is always self-belief. the next is that the ones who matter the most agree with you completely. it is one thing to say that you love somebody, through their flaws and all, and another to say that you believe in them and their strengths. 

my dearest friend Ryan told me once, while i was trying to nurse him out of a recent heartbreak, that i should write for hallmark. well, should i one day be discovered, i say it’s time to launch greeting cards that tell your special ones that you trust in them. i think that saying the 4 words with genuine sincerity is indeed an act of the famous 3 words. 

so i put it to you - my love - and to you - my friends who know who they are - that i truly believe in you.  

old friends whom i haven’t seen in a while often ask me what makes my other half so special to me. they point out our undisputed differences in culture and upbringing among other things. they ask me if he could ever satiate my thirst for intellectual stimulation or engage in my search for adventure. it’s true, very few can relate to my drive for things greater than the ordinary. after all, to the naked eye he is but a simple man, an average joe. sometimes i feel like i can’t exactly blame him for that because he was never really exposed to all the possibly interesting details about the world and that it’s is there for the taking. while everyone assumes that an average joe could never amount to anything, nobody ever took the time to stop and ask the right questions, open the right doors, and offer the right support. 

on the other hand, i have never met anybody who without so much as having to ask, after having not slept for 30 hours, who just got through the door from a physically draining 12 hour road trip following a full day’s work at a demanding fast paced job, run back out again to pick me up from work just so that i would not have to take a 10 minute walk in a dark, secluded area to get home. 

i think the next time i’m faced with the same question, my answer would have to explain in the simplest and most inoffensive way possible that the emphasis shouldn’t really be about meeting the right one, but really about being the right one. no, i’m not saying that you should compromise yourself to fit another life. i’m saying that while keeping true to your values and principles, you should be the key that makes the other person special. an average jane will obviously bring out an average joe. me? i’d like to think i’m the reason a boy became my man. 

whoever said that behind every successful man, is a woman, was very wise indeed. and i believe it works vice versa. if you don’t aspire to becoming someone great, who does great things with your life and brings great things to the people you love, then i can assure you that your partner won’t either, no matter how "right" they are for you. at the same time, there’s no point being all great and keeping it to yourself. share it, and if your partner doesn’t catch on, you are obviously not the right one for them. 

i think it might have been the same wise person who said, "i don’t want to do good things. i want to do great things." so remember, to bring out all things special in your partner, inspire them and lead them by example. i promise you, it will be a turning point in your relationship, shining light on whether or not you are truly "the one". 

   

queen of the chantilly lace bodice, elegantly embossed stationery and exquisitely clean bone china - philippine-born Monique Lhuillier.