VOICES FROM THE 69TH STREES
By Joseph Sylvester Evidente Pampliega

The other day, it was reported that a 16-year-old girl tried to kill herself by jumping off the school building’s second floor. For what? For quarrelling with her boyfriend which led to their breakup on the very day of Valentines.

That alone. But come to think of it, a quarrel may seem so trivial, making love so domesticated like as if it should always be happy, like things are always cloud-9. But it isn’t so.

We grew up seeing our parents argue, but they love each other and endured. We are often in conflict with our siblings or with our friends, but we know we love each other. We know of friends who were cheated but they remained committed. So, they try to work out their differences. Sometimes, we wonder why they endure their pains and they answer, “I don’t know. I know I just love him/her.”

Some personalities clash. Wants and needs are incompatible. Different family backgrounds. The list of causes of pains goes on. We don’t celebrate the fact that they did not give up, nor lost their minds, jumped from a two-storey building or shoot their brains out.

Pains and hurts are part of true love. It gives value to our love. We have to work ourselves out. The moment we decide to love fully, we give ourselves to it – committed to it – even to the pains and hurts. We cannot just simply select to love and splice every possibility of being hurt; of being in pain. I believe it is essentially bound together. Love cannot exist without pains and hurts; just so as pains and hurts cannot exist without real love.

In the same manner, love gives value to our pains and hurts. Without love, we can just simply shrug off a bad feeling, an act or personality we don’t like and quit the loving, and find another one. No strings attached, they say.

At some point we can ask ourselves, from this valuing, why do I love the person even when I am in tears, even when things are always bad? This grants you the chance to weigh-in love which is “immeasurable.” Why you endure and suffer all the pains and hurts is because you truly, madly, deeply love the person --- in the real and true sense of love.

So, how much have you endured and suffered for love? I hope and pray that as you reminisce every moment you have with your loved one, don’t look at the happy moments only. Look at all the more the sad moments and how you have endured and suffered in the process in order to love back no matter what.

God has given us so much “spirit,” “energy,” or “power,” to love (qualify it in any way you want) in our lifetime. We cannot just simply quit because loving seem painful or hurtful. This is your only gauge you chose, and is doing, the right thing. Live life to love; love life to live!*