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Publisher’s Note
It was 22 years ago when I arrived in Canada and chose Calgary, Alberta to be my home. Leaving my family and friends behind, it was a new adventure for me to be in a new country without knowing anyone. That was the time I looked for a Filipino community paper and never found any, [...]
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Erwinism: A Date with Expectation

Erwin D. Maramat

The day of hearts is long gone and so they say, but, each day is a perfect opportunity to love.

Some of us were born inside a kaleidoscope that weaves endless dreams and fairy tales, and fairy tales is all we had, unaware that one day our pristine spirits will leak out into a world contaminated with greed and hatred—inhospitable to life and innocence. We were endeared with the catchphrase “happily ever after” and were eager to find love, only to find as soon as part ways with our innocence, we realize that it’s not all bed of roses, it comes with thorns, bugs and sometimes horticulturist included, and that love and heartache are drinking buddies that crash into our parties uninvited. Both work together to get us woozy with hope and grief to bring symmetry in our once young world. Love used to be about flowers and poetry, but just as the pilot in Antione de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince, so too are we brainwashed into thinking that beauty and success should be tattooed on our flesh for us to deserve love.

For those of us who rely on our charms, we opted to talk our way into things. Words gracefully glided on our tongues and leapt into the heart of another, until out of the blue, science proposed those words be decrypted into a reasonable language called algorithms, in hopes that they may understand what we truly feel, so they can sell us a self-help book on how to love as if the feeling were just invented (note that I used were and not was). They subjected love under a microscope in hopes that they may find the ultimate key, but love is always complicated, because of it’s simple then we cannot call it love.

In the beginning, Aphrodite brings people together, names of strangers that used to be unthought of grow into the sweetest sounds that our mouths can utter and the clamour that once filled the air is muted and the storms within are silenced. When eyes meet, people are caught in an event horizon where time slows down stretched into what seems to be an eternity. Hearts race, palms profusely sweat, legs tremble, cheeks flush—people are reduced to ripe tomatoes. It’s just a matter of time before couples find themselves lounged in a couch watching ‘The Notebook’ or ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ and of course, ‘Fifty Shades of Dorian Grey.’

Love is intoxicating and once we get drunk, we never want to get sober. When paths get intertwined, we reach an agreement to be as one. Love is a union, not only of space, but of uniqueness and numbers. Often, we talk about how differences make relationships difficult to manage, but rarely do we acknowledge those differences as distinctions that may ultimately bring color and character to our relationships. Those unique attributes are what should be celebrated, and they are by those who are truly in love. From the union, our souls become kindred; our thoughts infused; our hearts beat in unison and we become a blend of warmth confined in the arms of our beloved. We seek to share the same sunsets and the promise of a new in the breaking dawn.

People go to great lengths or the ones they love. They are willing to risk it all. Talk about altruism—a true measure of love’s power, think about Jack who embraced the role of human popsicle, so that Rose may live to grow old, so she can throw back an expensive gem into the sea. That’s the beauty of love, people will wholeheartedly sacrifice everything

We breathe and relish every moment, until our ties get tested and our virtues tampered. Unrealistic expectation gets in the way of things. Some of us succumb to overheated imagination as we slip into a pop culture induced stupor that a knight in shining armor riding a Lamborghini with a humungous bank account will come to sweep us off our feet and we seek it in our relationships only to find that the truth is more modest. Modest as it may be, we learn the value of resiliency when we meet that someone who makes getting up worthwhile. To a fault, we try defining romance the way they are laid to us by those movies we watch. We impose our wants and we if we don’t get are fill, we tend to get frustrated. We expect so much of our partner that sometimes we fail to recognize that as much we want to be rescued, our salvation has drowned ahead of us.

If you are thinking of raising a family, you must raise a relationship. No relationship is easy, and it’s bound to be that way. This much you can expect, conflict is there to be resolved and considered a breakthrough any relationship. It’s not about working something out, it’s about working together and making things work. It may not always go your way, but if you are in a relationship with your ego more than you are with your partner, think again. This is the greatest excuse that people make, at the first sight of trouble, they immediately bail or jump ships thinking a new relationship is the cure bringing the same attitude; the same norm; the same expectation, only to find they are bewitched by the same problems not realizing it’s the same baggage that they were tagging all along. We are sold on the idea that there is a perfect relationship, but there is never any and beautiful stories that end well are the result of processes that were managed well through understanding, maturity and compromise.

In every fairy tale there is an antagonist, be it an evil villain or heartbreaking situations. There are monsters to be slain, and sometimes, not all the time but sometimes, Mr. Prince Charming or Ms. Damsel in Distress turns out to be the destroyer of worlds and what’s scarier is that we don’t recognize that it is really us. If we could learn to share our openly share our lives to our loved ones we might just end up with a happily ever after.

Erwinism: A Date with Expectation

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