Monday, October 25, 2004
After working for a call center for almost two months, my biological clock is altered. I would sleep at 4 am and wake at 12 noon. I am spending the wee hours surfing the net and watching TV. I am also hooked into chatting.
I am chatting to different people every night. Each person has a different story to tell and worth listening or rather worth reading. But almost all of them shares the same pattern of life. They are all skeptical about love and commitment. Each of them talks about how hard it is nowadays to stay in a healthy love relationship. And how time, distance, and priorities negate the possibility of commitment.
I was reading the Panorama( Sunday magazine under Manila Bulletin) and I was touched by the article written by Mrs. Anita Meily. October 25 would be the 52nd wedding anniversary of Joe (her hubby) and Mrs. Anita. Though she is eleven years widowed, she never forget to go to mass and thank the Lord for giving Joe to her.
According to her, the reason why most marriages fall apart is because the couples are lee in touch with their true feelings with one another. A wife and husband can be each other’s bestfriend. They should learn how to be open and relax with each other. That is the most important element in relationship that couples failed to incalculate miserably.
Communication is overshadowed by financial well-being and physical attraction. Sometimes guys don’t take the time to “meet” the girl by heart. They are overwhelmed by beauty and grace, thus engaging in an early relationship and eventually in the course of it they will discover things about their partner that they are not ready to accept. Then the couple separates because of those things that were discovered and most people call these things by the term “individual differences”.
As a young adult, these scenario alarms me. Four to seven years from now I will be starting to consider a lifetime commitment. Will still there be hope for my generation to make the masterpiece of human relationships work? Sometimes I am considering to stay alone and solitude that I don’t have to cry a river for a failed relationship.
My parents' relationship wasn’t perfect. After my dad died, my mom heard rumors that my dad had a mistress. However, no one had proven that. My mom is a widow just like Mrs. Anita. She was widowed when she was 47. Some relatives say that she is still young and the possibility of remarrying is not far fetch. But I believe my mom when she told me that she won’t marry again. I don’t know…she may have said that ten years ago to calm me. But after all these times I still believe her, there was something in what she said that I felt is so sincere and spelled endless.
Mrs. Meily’s article was more on reminiscing the lovely relationship she had with her husband. For a young love junkie like me, it seems like a dream to hear such fairytale-like story. I wanted to quote the article’s last paragraph:
“Do I feel sad today on our wedding anniversary? Not at all. I miss Joe, of course. There will forever be a void in my heart. But I know that Joe is in a far better place than all of us are today. I can only feel grateful for the opportunity given to me by the Lord to have loved and been truly loved during the 40 years Joe and I were together.”
1:27 AM