On Love

Spent a few hours last night with my best friend and realized how much I've missed him. I'm not the best person in the world, and I never found it easy to cultivate friendships, but when I make a connection with someone, I hang on for dear life. Someone once said that you can probably count your real friends on one hand. It's true. There are friends, and then there are friends. I'm glad I've met people who love me for who I am.

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Something I wrote a few months ago:

Life has been very mechanical lately. Automatic. Predictable. Far from mindless, but really really boring still.

Notwithstanding, I've been having wonderful discussions with some of my friends recently. Realizations mostly, life directions, epiphanies. About greatness and love and strength of character. It feels interesting, like I'm part of something big. Like the universe has plans for me or something.

The wonderful thing about my relationship with my close friends is that it's based on mutual respect. Not convenience, not affection, not circumstance. We seek out each other's company, that's the thing. I mean, for me anyway, it's very rare that you meet people that you really respect. Whose presence makes you feel bigger, more important. And not in the superficial way that money or fame makes people important; more like this: it's as if by simply talking to them, you take for granted that you can achieve the impossible. Move mountains. Change the world. It's as if idealism is not an abstract concept, but a lifestyle.

I don't know if it's the same with everybody else, but that's how it is with me. That's the common thread with all of my close friendships. Na hindi kami basura sa mata ng isa't isa, but something else, something brighter, larger. At this point indescribable, just a sense of something real, almost tangible. Extraordinary maybe, or maybe unreal.

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Relationships are always difficult I think, especially when passion obfuscates reason. But to feel (yes, even pain) is a gift, notwithstanding that it sometimes feels like a curse.