on chance or choice..

when i was younger, i thought that love was forever..that you will only have one true love for one lifetime... now, i'm not so sure about that..

somebody told me then that when you find the one that's 'made' for you..when you know deep inside you that he or she is your soul mate--- your other half----, don't let go because you might never find him or her again..

i believed that, but i also know that when you truly love a person, you have to let go and die a little to let the other person live. never mind if she or he is your soul mate..nevermind if you love each other..there are other things and feelings more important than love..

i told my very good friend, a catholic priest then in the university, that though loving oneself can be extremely tricky, you can always teach your heart to love other people...you can choose who to love, and who to be happy with. love is not just giddy, happy feeling.. in fact, love is not a feeling at all...love is a decision.. a decision to bring on to yourself a thousand and one responsibilities, hardships, pain, sleepless nights, crosses to bear, and other masochistic feasts...

i don't know if love requires too much, or it is just because i require too much of it.. i cannot love again without respect...without loyalty(now loyalty and faithfulness are two different things in my book-- though i'm faithful, i don't really care much about faithfulness to me nowadays--i prefer loyalty..i think i'm too old for myths.) without trust..without commitment..without freedom..without friendship..and without loving myself, first...

love in the rose-tinted glasses can be so demanding that it will eat up all my energy, my time, my mind and my soul...it is so complicated that my 1+1s don't add up right. i don't want the read-my-heart-and-my-soul type of love anymore. i now prefer the what you see is what you get kind. i mean, i eat mental complications for breakfast, but emotional complications are horror stories for me.. i lost myself in that kind of love before, but am relieved to understand that i have found myself in another kind of love--- not a perfect one-- not a fairytale.. but hey, love is love.. everything is relative..

having said all these, i just want to share what my mom has told me once too many times.... we always have a choice in everything...always....and having a choice in everything will always give us something to lean on..a strength that seems not to be there but which will get you through the rocky, landslide-typhoon-ridden-tsunami-meninggococcemia infested moment of your life.. you will less likely be a victim of life's sometimes not so happy jokes, when you always have a choice.. if you think you are desperate, you still have a choice--to feel desperate and be desperate, or to acknowledge that you are not on top of the world at the moment, but know that you have been blessed in actually more ways than you care to notice--AND DECIDE turn your life around.. if you are irritated or angry at the person in front of you, you can choose to be angry and let loose your anger and damn the torpedoes... or you can choose to stay calm, and express your anger more creatively [i still pick on my stealth missiles button once in a while when i'm not painting them heheheh] :)

bottom line is.. there is no perfect love, no perfect person, no perfect way of doing any thing... in fact, no perfect anything.. i think..what is there, always, is a choice. you always have a choice, and it's yours to make.. and it's yours to live or die with..

this hoolabaloolahh of mine was triggered by the following piece sent by a former classmate through a bulletin board... hello arminda.. hehehhe

Chance or Choice

When we meet the right person to love, when we're at the right place at the right time, that's chance.

When you meet someone you're attracted to, that's not a choice. That's chance.

Being caught up in a moment (and there are a lot of couples who get together because of this) is not a choice. That's also a chance.

The difference is what happens afterwards. When will you take that infatuation, that crush, that mind-blowing attraction to the next level?That's when all sanity goes back, you sit down and contemplate whether you want to make this into a concrete relationship or just a fling.

If you decide to love a person, even with his faults, that's not a chance. That's choice.

When you choose to be with a person, no matter what, that's choice.

Even if you know there are many people out there who are moreattractive, smarter, and richer than your mate, and yet, you decide to love your mate just the same, that's choice.

Infatuation, crushes, and attraction come to us by chance. But true love that lasts is truly a choice. A choice that we make.

Regarding soulmates, there's a beautiful movie quote that I believe is so true about this: "Fate brings you together, but it's still up to you to make it happen."

I believe that soulmates do exist, that there is truly someone made for you. But it's still up to you to make the choice if you're going to do something about it or not.

We may meet our soulmates by chance, but loving and staying withour soul mate is still a choice we have to make.

We came to the world not by finding someone perfect to love, BUT to learn how to love an imperfect person perfectly.

~Author Unknown~