“It’s so teenager.” That’s a line I read from my former classmate’s Friendster blog. Come to think of it, lately I’ve been having thoughts regarding some stuff which I consider important in my life. If indeed some of them are immature, shallow, childish…trivial – you know if am bein’ like Cher in Clueless – makin’ a big fuss over a lot of irrelevant things…Like sooo…totally! Nyahahah!!!
Last Saturday, a li’l before midnight my high school pal sent me an SMS telling me she had a fight with her BF and that she’d decided to ask for some time and space…in small terms, they’ve decided to shift into a “cool off” mode. I don’t know exactly what the fight was all about but that line just hit me: It’s so TEENAGER.
Between my friends, I never really insist on anything when it comes to their relationship partners. For me, as long as they’re happy, am okay with it. They are welcome as long as they don’t mess up our lives or cramp our style…Hahaha, I wish! Seriously, they are welcome as long as my friends want them. It’s their lives, their decisions…and not mine. Not that I don’t care, it’s just that friendship has to have boundaries…you have to give your buddies space and the freedom to live their own lives…stuff like that will help them grow as a person and you to grow deeper as friends…the bond that will glue the friendship stronger.
Coming back to the SMS, am pretty disappointed with my girl maybe because I expected her to be wiser and smarter in terms of relating to men. She’ll be turning 25 next month, we’ve known each other for over a decade, and after a number of boyfriends and a failed marriage – which by the way is so totally not her fault…but that of her stupid husband – Nyahaha! I just thought that by now, she’d know better. I know, I know…I love the girl and all and she knows more than a thing or two when it comes to relationships , she just refuses to think straight!
Anyways, this is not about my friend alone…This is also about me and how or what I think about men and relationships. Right now I’m asking myself: Is it my friend who hasn’t learned about love and romance or is it I who have the problem? Have I become cynical? Deluded even? Or have I simply grown up? I’d prefer to think of it more as the latter – cynicism is not and will never be synonymous with realism.
Cynicism has no faith. It’s negative. It doesn’t dream, it doesn’t hope. With it, things like love, passion and romance are non-existent. It just criticizes and analyzes – there are no such things like magic and miracles.
Realism believes enough and knows enough what this faith can achieve. For the realist there’s always hope, and dreams most of the time can be worked into reality. To the realist emotions are real – it’s true, it exists, it has meaning. The realist asks, rationalizes. While it also doesn’t consider magic and miracles, it accepts the mysticism…That there are still events exact and actuarial science have yet to explain and that such occurrences cannot be denied.
And that is who I am now, a REALIST – well in terms of relationships anyways…Anything worth keeping and anything both parties are willing to work hard on and compromise upon in order to maintain is workable. There are always only two choices: GO or NO…no buts, no ifs, no maybes. Not now, not yet, not ready, am busy means: bye-bye baby. Either you keep it and nurture it or you leave it to die. Any relationship will never work when only one side wants to make it work. It’s a partnership that needs love, affection, consideration, commitment and mutual understanding from both parties (And that’s just for starters). One cannot be the loving, understanding, giving and forgiving alone. All emotions invested has to be returned ‘cause at one point in time the “loving” one will be exhausted…drained…he will be pushed to his limits…to the point of saturation…the threshold of tolerance…the edge of patience. And its not gonna be a pretty picture.
Believe me am the cheesy romantic type. I’ll write mushy letters and sweet silly rhymes; e-mail stupid love notes and will never get tired of greeting my man “Mawnins’ and Nytynyt, luv Us!” every single day. But the idea of unrequited love doesn’t have much appeal to me anymore. Given the choice, it’s something that I won’t make room for in my life. Why? Because it’s sad. Why hurt yourself sticking up with somebody who doesn’t see your real worth, who takes you for granted, laughs at your values and doesn’t respect your opinion? It’s sad. It’s hard.
Simply put: it’s just not worth it – both the person and the relationship. Uh, like we are now in the information age you know, like this is the most hi-tech period in the entire history of mankind…Like we have stuff called Microsoft, credit cards, Nokia, Prada, Brad Pitt, Dolce & Gabana, cars, make up…Fire’s already been invented…In short: Why waste your time for a caveman? Duh!!!
I don’t know about you but I think, the idea sucks…BIG TIME! Why hurt yourself in the process? Martyrdom might as well be a Romanticist concept, just like Communism (Let’s not get into that debate!) Plain and simple: It’s sick! It’s a distorted view of how relationships should be. If you must love like that at all, then take my word: DO it from a distance.
And puh-leease…Do not and I repeat Do NOT give me that “To have loved and lost is better than to have not loved at all” crap. Reality Check: You can never lose what you never had. Chances are what we had is but a disillusionment brought about by the promise of our own fairytale-dream-love-story.
We get our hearts “broken” because we let ourselves believe in dreams. No, am not bein’ cynical here, okay? See, we’re forgetting a key concept here: we are talking about dreams. And precisely that’s what they are: DREAMS. Hey, don’t go passing the judgment. I am an absolute optimist. Totally!!! Am an archer born on the year of the dog. It’s a fire sign. Western astrology and eastern zodiac will tell you that I live, weave and breathe dreams – but that mustn’t extinguish the fact that they are nothing more but dreams – most of the time they wont always come true…no matter how hard you work for it or how badly you wanted it. It’s not about quitting the belief or doing away with the dreaming part, its more of drawing the line between the real: which is what you have and the ideal, that which you dream of.
Last Saturday, a li’l before midnight my high school pal sent me an SMS telling me she had a fight with her BF and that she’d decided to ask for some time and space…in small terms, they’ve decided to shift into a “cool off” mode. I don’t know exactly what the fight was all about but that line just hit me: It’s so TEENAGER.
Between my friends, I never really insist on anything when it comes to their relationship partners. For me, as long as they’re happy, am okay with it. They are welcome as long as they don’t mess up our lives or cramp our style…Hahaha, I wish! Seriously, they are welcome as long as my friends want them. It’s their lives, their decisions…and not mine. Not that I don’t care, it’s just that friendship has to have boundaries…you have to give your buddies space and the freedom to live their own lives…stuff like that will help them grow as a person and you to grow deeper as friends…the bond that will glue the friendship stronger.
Coming back to the SMS, am pretty disappointed with my girl maybe because I expected her to be wiser and smarter in terms of relating to men. She’ll be turning 25 next month, we’ve known each other for over a decade, and after a number of boyfriends and a failed marriage – which by the way is so totally not her fault…but that of her stupid husband – Nyahaha! I just thought that by now, she’d know better. I know, I know…I love the girl and all and she knows more than a thing or two when it comes to relationships , she just refuses to think straight!
Anyways, this is not about my friend alone…This is also about me and how or what I think about men and relationships. Right now I’m asking myself: Is it my friend who hasn’t learned about love and romance or is it I who have the problem? Have I become cynical? Deluded even? Or have I simply grown up? I’d prefer to think of it more as the latter – cynicism is not and will never be synonymous with realism.
Cynicism has no faith. It’s negative. It doesn’t dream, it doesn’t hope. With it, things like love, passion and romance are non-existent. It just criticizes and analyzes – there are no such things like magic and miracles.
Realism believes enough and knows enough what this faith can achieve. For the realist there’s always hope, and dreams most of the time can be worked into reality. To the realist emotions are real – it’s true, it exists, it has meaning. The realist asks, rationalizes. While it also doesn’t consider magic and miracles, it accepts the mysticism…That there are still events exact and actuarial science have yet to explain and that such occurrences cannot be denied.
And that is who I am now, a REALIST – well in terms of relationships anyways…Anything worth keeping and anything both parties are willing to work hard on and compromise upon in order to maintain is workable. There are always only two choices: GO or NO…no buts, no ifs, no maybes. Not now, not yet, not ready, am busy means: bye-bye baby. Either you keep it and nurture it or you leave it to die. Any relationship will never work when only one side wants to make it work. It’s a partnership that needs love, affection, consideration, commitment and mutual understanding from both parties (And that’s just for starters). One cannot be the loving, understanding, giving and forgiving alone. All emotions invested has to be returned ‘cause at one point in time the “loving” one will be exhausted…drained…he will be pushed to his limits…to the point of saturation…the threshold of tolerance…the edge of patience. And its not gonna be a pretty picture.
Believe me am the cheesy romantic type. I’ll write mushy letters and sweet silly rhymes; e-mail stupid love notes and will never get tired of greeting my man “Mawnins’ and Nytynyt, luv Us!” every single day. But the idea of unrequited love doesn’t have much appeal to me anymore. Given the choice, it’s something that I won’t make room for in my life. Why? Because it’s sad. Why hurt yourself sticking up with somebody who doesn’t see your real worth, who takes you for granted, laughs at your values and doesn’t respect your opinion? It’s sad. It’s hard.
Simply put: it’s just not worth it – both the person and the relationship. Uh, like we are now in the information age you know, like this is the most hi-tech period in the entire history of mankind…Like we have stuff called Microsoft, credit cards, Nokia, Prada, Brad Pitt, Dolce & Gabana, cars, make up…Fire’s already been invented…In short: Why waste your time for a caveman? Duh!!!
I don’t know about you but I think, the idea sucks…BIG TIME! Why hurt yourself in the process? Martyrdom might as well be a Romanticist concept, just like Communism (Let’s not get into that debate!) Plain and simple: It’s sick! It’s a distorted view of how relationships should be. If you must love like that at all, then take my word: DO it from a distance.
And puh-leease…Do not and I repeat Do NOT give me that “To have loved and lost is better than to have not loved at all” crap. Reality Check: You can never lose what you never had. Chances are what we had is but a disillusionment brought about by the promise of our own fairytale-dream-love-story.
We get our hearts “broken” because we let ourselves believe in dreams. No, am not bein’ cynical here, okay? See, we’re forgetting a key concept here: we are talking about dreams. And precisely that’s what they are: DREAMS. Hey, don’t go passing the judgment. I am an absolute optimist. Totally!!! Am an archer born on the year of the dog. It’s a fire sign. Western astrology and eastern zodiac will tell you that I live, weave and breathe dreams – but that mustn’t extinguish the fact that they are nothing more but dreams – most of the time they wont always come true…no matter how hard you work for it or how badly you wanted it. It’s not about quitting the belief or doing away with the dreaming part, its more of drawing the line between the real: which is what you have and the ideal, that which you dream of.
To sum up, this wasn’t written to shatter anybody’s illusions about love but as an eye opener to those who have yet to experience and a reminder to those who seem to have forgotten. For us to see what’s really happening and to re-assess things as they actually are and not as we want them or perceives them to be…To set aside all the fantasies and pretense and to get serious with business.
Maybe one day, you’ll look at things from a different angle and see it from my point of view. One enters a relationship because he wants commitment – it has to work both ways – with respect, acceptance, understanding and all that stuff and more. This may sound offensive, but reconsider what you’ve just read…
“So, you had a fight…Big deal! My advice: It’s so teenager, just get REAL!”
