San Francisco. February 14, 2012
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Today is a day of hearts and love. It behooves us all to pause and think about love and what it means to each of us.
We are now well into decades of loving whether it be the same woman or a succession or a simultaneity of women, or both. If we haven’t figured out this, in the words of one Cole Porter, “crazy thing called love,” perhaps we never will.
I speak of the love for which songs are sung and sonnets are written, for which wars are fought and kingdoms are toppled and treaties abjured and thrones abdicated.
I speak of love that is undeterred by wrong and undiminished by distance. I speak of love that opens minds and bridges differences, of love that inspires to greatness and makes kings of commoners, of love whose presence brings about immeasurable joy and whose absence causes unbearable sadness and makes each night’s sleep the sleep of replenishing rest and makes each day worth waking up to. I speak of love that defies age and transcends death. I speak of love that wonders if one might see one’s beloved in heaven.
It has been said that love is blind. I disagree. I believe that, quite the contrary, love sees more and sees deeper for love sees not with the eyes but with the heart and the heart sees beyond the greying and the wrinkling and sees behind the fleeting beauty and ebbing gaiety. Love’s vision grows keener through the years even as the eyes go weaker with the years. Love’s vision gets sharper with age and sees nuances and shades of emotion in the beloved’s countenance that were invisible in youth’s glare.
Today, on the day of love, may Cupid’s arrows find their mark again in each of our ever-young hearts, bypassed or unmodified they might be, and stents or pacemakers notwithstanding. Happy Valentine’s Day to all you lovers everywhere.
(Mr. Armando Chavez is an English Major from the Ateneo de Manila University. His wife Boots Chavez, is the official representative of inquirer.net in the United States. She was recently cited as one of the most influential women in America.)