Falling For Time

Was watching Perhaps Love last night. One line stood out above all that was said or sung. It was after Jacky Cheung realized that his love affair with the female lead, his long-time girlfriend, was finally over. He stood up, and said “我们在一起久了。要的也多了。”

Something abt the way he said it, or the situation leading up to it… really caught me. A fren called me a few nights ago, talking abt how she felt very stifled by her bf, who keeps wanting more and more of her… not allowing her any space of her own. I just wondered abt how these things are so subtly progressive. We all start out in relationships being so polite and considerate. With minimum demands on the other, seeking to please and accommodate. In time, we start to more and more have demands on each other, expecting the other to think the way we do, share the same preferences as us… we wonder why we still don’t get each other, or develop the same passions for the same things… then we start wondering why we still dun understand each other after all this time… but we’re reluctant to let go of what we’ve clutched hold of for so long now already….

I watched Pride & Prejudice on mon, then Perhaps Love last night…. Two shows that both showcase a lot of very intense emotions, both buried under an exterior of composure. In one, social expectations forced the women to suppress their feelings, and their search for their own happiness. In the other, their feelings were always suppressed beneath a façade of independence and self-sufficiency, all in the name of how “the show must go on”.

What I really liked abt Pride & Prejudice was the fact that the couple who clung most fiercely to their romantic ideals, despite all opposition from both people and circumstances, were the most richly rewarded in the end. Jane and Bingley, despite their happily ever after as well, was hardly as satisfying as the one between Lizzie and Darcy. In fact, one comment I really liked said “Jane and Bingley exhibit to the reader true love unhampered by either pride or prejudice, though in their simple goodness, they also demonstrate that such a love is mildly dull.”

What I liked abt Perhaps Love was the ending… I don’t think I would have liked it if there had been a very clear cut ending. That would have been such a cop-out. In that sense, the English name for it, “Perhaps Love” actually serves as a better name than its actually Chinese name. In the show - Sun Na's affections, always torn between someone whom she still loves deeply despite her façade and her relationship with the man she spent such a long time with, who had built her up… The whole ambiguity of her feelings was so central to the story that if she had decided whom she was going to end up with by the end of the show, I would have really hated it.

Its been a gd week for me. Celebrated Syl’s birthday with the guys, watched two shows that really agreed with me (in the sense that it went down very well with me), and of course the fact that the laundry stopped being a concern of mine anymore. The only little dent in my week is the fact that my PC is down, barely operable…. As is my modem. So I have no internet connection at home… need to resort to checking all my mails in the office. Since my contract expires in 9 days, I need to take action. And soon.

Everyone’s been really sweet to me abt how I’m feeling towards the whole thing with Grace… I'm basking in the warmth of the attention. Grins. But I guess my bigger concern is for someone else, who obviously isn’t doing too well. Its always hard when dreams get shattered, and when we can only stand by helpless to watch the sandcastles we painstakingly put together washed out ruthlessly by the waves. And for those who care, its almost as painful to stand by helplessly, or to exercise the restraint to not interfere, and give the loved one time to be alone.

My profile says I’m a healer. But I’ve never once felt like one when talking to anyone who approached me. In fact, I always feel as helpless whether the person talks to me, or shuts off from me. But I guess one lesson I’ve always learnt again and again, marveling at the simplicity of its truth, is how we often forget the power of time.

How time really does change everything. How time reveals everything… from things we didn’t know, to things we didn’t want to admit about ourselves. How in time everything looks and feels so different from what it seemed back then. How time shows us how much we’ve grown, and how far we’ve come. How time heals all wounds (or, as someone once said… time reveals how God heals us…).

Its amazing, cos time is the one thing I hate the most when I'm in pain. I hate that it passes so slowly… that I can’t get out of it, that it forces me to live in and through the pain of what I'm going through. I can’t wait for it to pass quickly… trying to convince myself that the faster time passes by, the faster also, would I get over the pain.

Yet looking back, (at least for myself…) time is what I’m most grateful for, for the most obvious reasons.

Biding my time. One thing I’ve come to do. After falling in love with time. With what time can do. What it has done for me. How time is what will confirm my affections as either spurious or genuine… will affirm my convictions of what I always have clung on to as being right… that if I give anything time, it will be something that allows me to better trust my choice in the matter.

After all, that’s what Lizzie and Darcy did.

What Sun Na decided to do.

What I am doing.