Someone different
By Bernard Inocentes S. Garcia
TO THE girl on M. Velez St.:
Forget Adele. She said it in her song that she wanted the guy to be reminded that for her it wasn’t over yet. She wrote Someone Like You at that moment when love has made her blind.
The jerk has left her for another woman and broke her heart. So why look for someone like him? The guy has good qualities, you say. But every guy seems perfect when you’re in love.
The British songwriter and singer has made millions and become even a bigger star with the song. She has moved on and is married now with a kid. If, in your case, you’re still looking for someone like him, you’re missing the other good guys, and time.
In Love in the Time of Cholera, Florentino Ariza waited fifty years for the woman he loved, Fermina Daza, to become a widow and married her in their old age. And while waiting, he bedded 622 women excluding those he forgot to write down in his journal.
But Florentino Ariza with his legendary waiting is fiction.
If the guy is married now or committed to someone else, it’s time to find someone different. Otherwise, you’d only be reminded of him and cling to your glory days.
You’ve asked me what’s wrong. Your problem is your heart. It loses the courage to commit mistakes and fails to appreciate new love because you think too much. You’re smart, but love as you know well is about getting dumb and laughing about the silly moments. It’s about taking risks, and the more madness it involves, the more glorious it becomes.
I’m not saying reason is unimportant. Reason is your guide but not your limitation. It should free you from your fears and embolden you to take a leap out of your comfort zone. But if it shackles your passions instead, reason has become your prison.
I’m sure you remember well how we smiled in law school discussing Chua-Qua vs. Clave where the Court through Justice Regalado touched on the essence of love: “If the two eventually fell in love, despite the disparity in their ages and academic levels, this only lends substance to the truism that the heart has reasons of its own which reason does not know.”
Courtship, like Valentine’s Day, has become a spectacle of flowers, chocolates, teddy bears, and dinner dates. I have nothing against them. But if you want to know the right one for you, do not measure him with flowers and other stuff. Take him to a walk in an ordinary night.
If the distance becomes shorter, and you develop a world of your own amidst all the chaos in the streets and you appreciate again the beauty of the stars and their silence, he may be the right one for you. If he doesn’t fit the idea of your kind of guy, forget that image in your head.
Your ideals are up in the sky, while the man you should love is down on the streets.
Victor Hugo said it well: “What is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.”
As long as he loves you, everything else matters less. Never mind that from your ideals he is someone different.
