LOVE IS CONSIDERATE

I had a friend who fell in love with the daughter of his father’s first cousin and when the family knew about it almost everyone was fuming.  But the feeling was mutual, for aside from their mere three-year age difference he was a certified ladies’ man for he was very good-looking.

When hostile relatives, dissents and detractors grew every day, he decided he had to act quickly, thus, he took no chances and ran away with the girl to settle down elsewhere.  I had only wished him well and his distant-niece-turned-lover, for who could stop a determined lovestruck kid who, like today’s youngsters, was a firm believer there’d be ‘forever’?

I remembered my friend again when I attended the burial of my late maternal grandfather’s sister-in-law.  There, I had a very rare chance to meet upclose almost my mother’s entire relatives very briefly though.

So many years ago, when I was much younger than my friend’s age when he loved his kin so, I fell for a distant cousin too.  Nevertheless, my friend and I had completely contrasting fates as, unlike his love recipient, mine’s till now would never know.

She was marvelous; her exhausted image from non-stop household chores could not hide her rare kind of beauty that was extraordinarily graceful despite her being less in ‘luck.’  At her young age I enlisted her in my personal list of daughters of Eve in the whole universe whose stares my stares, when we would talk, could never ever meet straight up. 

She was in high school when we saw each other for the very first time in our lives and I nearly blamed the heavens for making us blood relatives thus instantly cutting down all my desire with bluntness.  My two closest drinking buddies, both of them have since deceased, pleaded for my help in courting her despite my made up stories she was one of the boys because obviously she looked like one of the goddesses.

In view of our distance I abandoned my blossoming affection, and as time went by it only felt like some kind of hurt that was a cross between intestinal gas and chest pain each time I saw her in whatever mood.  I told myself my heart might be right but the person would be wrong in the eyes of my relatives and the neighborhood, so, as to my uncomfortable feeling, I’d only cut the cheese and stayed away from her for good.

I always knew I had freedom to choose whom to love, yet, for the sake of other people I had to nip it in the bud.  When I became a Christian I saw the wisdom in what I did, i.e, not following my own instinct.  Otherwise, she’d never have reached whatever riches she is now fully enjoying at present.

As human beings with basic rights, we have to exercise our freedom but we have to see to it that we won’t offend those who do not understand.  “Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak,” as Paul admonished the Corinthians (I Cor.8:9 NIV).  

Be considerate and live for others too, as what he reminded to Christians in Rome:  “For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone” (Rom.14:7 NIV).