Love in the right places - mi AMOUR

I was talking to a friend about love.

We have our life stories about love lost & then found. Or love at first sight and those happily ever afters. The Filipino primetime telenovelas or the classic drama anthology Maalala Mo Kaya usually turns a dramatic flare on life and love - sometimes with all the slapping, crying, killing, burying, more slapping, more crying, then always a happily ever after.

As real as it gets are the true-to-life dramas we encounter every day of our lives. The people we love (or hate) and live with. The family we cannot choose but have to carry the burden of being part of their insane life intertwining with our insane world. The boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, husband or wife who has gone astray and created a void in our lives. Or the loved ones who have moved on to the other side of the world and have left us to live life in solace.

There's no such thing as forever. I wish there were. Then there would be no more heartaches or painful goodbyes. But life is never fair. No one ever said that it would be. Even at the best days of our lives, there's always something bound to go wrong. One day, a love gone astray. One day, you just get the feeling that you've fallen out of love. One day, the moment is gone.

I share these random thoughts about love, not because Valentine's day is a few days away from my first blog (and probably only blog) in February, but because I know the feeling of falling in and out of love...of trying to find a fairy tale story to our lives because we all want a happily ever after ending...of being together and trying to make it work but not being happy with the one you fall in love with or vice-versa...of finding an excuse to being a hopeless romantic or staying single forever...

You see, love should not be sought. It seeks you. It's found not in the busy chat rooms of an internet or a dating service. It's not found in the people you meet at work or by chance meet up through casual introductions. It's not found in the people that are introduced to you by friends or by the giggly encounters in soirees or one-night stands. It's found in the right place - in your heart.

Love is always a work in progress. You go through difficult times together and the worst times are the real test of love.

I was watching "Amour" over the weekend. It's a French film nominated for this year's Oscar award. I have never felt so depressed after watching a movie as when I saw "Amour". The film is about two elderly couple, Georges and Anne, who are music teachers in their 80s. The couple live alone in an apartment in an upscale French neighborhood and are enjoying their octogenarian years. One day, Anne has a stroke and after a few days in the hospital, Georges brings her home to care for her. Both in their sunset years, their bond of love is severely tested when Anne's condition deteriorates and she is required to have an operation which leaves her paralyzed. Georges refuses to commit her to a nursing home and continues to care for her in spite of his own limitations in caring for her in his old age. His personal mission in life was to become her caretaker...and towards the end of the story the movie was really difficult to watch. It drained me emotionally and left me with the thought that things were to get worse until its inevitable ending. It wasn't one of those movies that you'd want to watch if you're looking for fairy tale endings and magic castles, because this film downright is an unsentimental drama tells you from the get go that you're going to watch a movie that has a tragic ending.

Sometimes love in the right places means just loving one through thick and thin. It's the most difficult choice we make in life, but it's the kind of love that will make us weather the worst of times.