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“I love you” is one if not the most beautiful words that human being possessed. I want to begin by asking the most famous question in a beauty contest “for you what is love?” Generally, we often equate love with romance, the feeling of being “kilig” a term commonly used by the young generation to manifest the feeling of love. Some associate love with sex. Younger generation, according to the report, is most active now in engaging into sexual activity to express that desire of intimacy. While others consider love as a phenomenon, a feeling of the mysterious, of the divine.

There are many notions of love but I want to start by going back to its roots. Does love really exist? Basing on our definitions of love, we can conclude three realities that can prove that love exists. First is, love is an experienced reality. It is something that occurs every day, a part of our existence. All created beings especially humans have the inherent perception about love. It’s a reality that does not need to be thought, to be learned from universities, from books, from google and wikepedia because it is in us, an experienced reality that is part of us and that created us. Second point, after learning that love is an experienced reality, one question arises, how this reality be experienced? The answer is that we could experience love because love is a word, a language.  In order to experience love it has to be understood as a word, as a language, and every meaning assigned to an individual’s definition of love must also be understood. Any meaning which is not understood is infatuation. Infatuation is the misinterpretation of love. By the use of language the meaning of love is brought to its fullness. Language serves as the channel to best communicate love inside of us. Lastly, because love is a language means that it is understandable, comprehensible by us humans. It is rational and logical and love which is chaotic is not love but purely chaos. Even the Bible affirms this fact in its account on the creation. In the beginning before God created the world there was only chaos (absence of love) but through him, who is LOVE, made all things existing because in Himself God is love (no chaos in himself but unity and love), so to say true–love is love understood. As  Immanuel Kant said, “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason.” So it’s simple as A, B, C that love exists!

After knowing that it exists, we can further ask, if it exists where it came from? Let’s start biblically, “when God created everything he saw the man lonely for he was alone so he made him fell asleep and in him he created woman…” My point is that love sprouts out of loneliness. What is loneliness? Webster dictionary defined it as  “sad from being apart from other people, causing sad feelings that come from being apart from other people.” Meaning the phenomenon of loneliness is part of human experience. Typically, the answer to the problem of loneliness is the reaching out to the other person. Love is the answer to the problem of loneliness because it is only in love that I find oneness with the other and still remain in Himself.

So if love is a two souls united by one heart out of loneliness, it also indicates that for love to be real it must be a reciprocal love! Oftentimes we heard people saying “minahal ko sya ng sobra pero kahit konting sukli walang siyang ibinalik.” This statement suggests that we often misunderstood love as a one highway to heaven. I remembered when I fell in love and had girlfriend, (matagal na po, six years ng single…hihi) I was so pre-occupied by making her happy, that was giving her everything that I had until I came to question my self-worth? Is the meaning of love is this? A one way door to happiness? No, I want to say that love is an active exchange of subjectivity, that is I give myself to you completely, my weaknesses, goodness, my being as a person and the other must do the same.  However, love does not mean a loss of self. In loving the other I do not lose myself but rather, I fulfil and complete it. If my love is to be authentic, the gift of myself must be something valuable to me. I cannot give to the other something which I consider a trash. The other is not a trashcan but is seen more as a treasure chest. There exists in loving the other the desire to be loved in return. That desire is essential but it should not become the motive of loving. I do not love because I expect to be loved in return, but I love because I find my fullness in loving!

Loving reciprocally gives us a new dimension of faithfulness. The theology of the body by pope John Paul II says that love is free, total, fruitful and faithful. This dimension gives birth to the union of  two beings that create its communitarian aspect, the “we” notion of love. Love is not a selfish reality; instead, it is a shared experience, a gift of the self. This gift of the self is more than the gift of what I have, what I possess, or what will I have but rather the gift of what I was, what I am and what will I become, a complete giving of the self.

To conclude this article I want to say that love is eternal! The old song says “first love never dies.” I think that gives us a grasp to the eternal dimension of love. As Gabriel Marcel would say, “I love you” means “you shall not die”. Meaning loving goes beyond space, dimensions and time, maybe I am too progressive in my ideas by saying this but love transcends physics, that love can go to the realm that science cannot even step, that it can penetrate what seems impenetrable by human reason. As Blaise Pascal said, “the heart has its reason which reason cannot comprehend.”  After all the discussions about love, it seems as if love in itself can never be exhausted and truly love is a mystery. To see this mystery is to experience it, rather than talk about it. But what can love do to one’s life. Hmmm… let’s try it anyway and see if without love, we can be anything at all as an old adage asserts, “it’s better to love and have lost it, than never tried to love at all.” And my message to all of you “I Love You” muahhhh…..