Searching through a vast wasteland of MS Word documents in my computer I was able to find a worth while read. I wrote this article for our Philosophy 104 class in college and it at landed a perfect score at 100%! I really don’t know why because I don’t really have good grammatical skills in writing even now. I remember I was still in third year college back then, It took a lot of time to think about this article and most of it discusses on how Filipinos differ from other countries when it comes to love. c(”,)

Wow, it really has been quite a while since I’ve read this. Hope you’ll enjoy it as I did writing it without giving any thought to it. I just kept writing and writing and writing……..

****************** Here it goes….. copy if you want to just leave some comments or credits ******************

The Phenomenology of Love

By Kenneth Carlo Santos

B.S.-Computer Science 3A
Philosophy 104

2:30 – 3:30 MW

March 20, 2003

Respectfully Submitted to:

Mr. Ryan Maboloc

Ateneo de Davao University College

Philosophy Division

Love 101

As a Filipino I myself have a different viewpoint on love and so do most of us. A Filipino’s love for a woman or a man is something far more complex than the other forms of love that we look up to in television in movies that view love in its highest form as sex, which is false. The Filipino’s love is more romantic and true in form because it evolves and is nurturing. My phenomenology deals more about the male Filipino psyche because female Filipinos are more difficult to understand for now.

So what is love then? Love in its basic form is conscious care. Just like when a man loves his car, he will always think about what might happen to his vehicle and thinks positively of it. This is also the case when a Filipino man loves a woman. He thinks too much of the other which can cause him to forget that he himself exists too. This is not loyalty but indeed, it is stupidity. Loyalty in love therefore only exists when the couple se each almost all the time which greatly supports the statement “actions speak louder than words”. The women call this stupidity “sweet”. What is so sweet about that? You never get to get together with your friends, be in solitude yet unknowingly men like these too I really do not know why but the fact is that is what Filipino love is.

The Course of True
Love

True Love may seem impossible but can exist. The path to true love is a long and arduous one. What is long here is the realization part of a Filipino man if he really thinks that the one he loves is truly the one for him and would complement for his incompleteness. I will elaborate on the paths I have taken and might be the right one.

Number 1, the contact, for men, this is the time when our necks really ache for an awful long time due to staring. Contact is extremely important in the process because without it interest never blooms. The contact I describe here is not contact by the eyes but by thoughts, no one can fall in love with just looking at the person if this is so it feels like falling in love with an object. Anyone who is able to get a girlfriend or boyfriend at this time is just puppy love. Filipinos express love differently at this time, they do what they feel and they do not say what they think about the other, definitely not straight to the point well at least its nice and unique. The initial contact can lead to more and more meetings, meetings of the mind. Usually during the first time, Filipino men try to hide their feelings to preserve the macho instinct. This is funny because the time will come when the one they love will move out and then the men regret their choice. Then when the next one comes along, they do the same mistake again. This only proves that both sides need to do something in order for them to be one. One side cannot exist without the other just as the message must come from one side and must deliver to the other. Rejection is such a big deal for the Filipino man and the best thing to counter this is to accept it.

After acceptance of both sides, they announce their love to the world I do not see any reason why they should do this but it can serve as proof that they both love each other. This helps in creating true love because a couple who is not afraid of showing love in the world knows they have accepted each other and know each other as well. In a way they show selflessness in a form where in both are not shy to admit there love. So that this bond may persevere, they create a vow upon each other wherein they follow it so they may consider themselves loyal and faithful. The vow here can reach as long as a whole book but even so this does not mean anything at all for true faithfulness and loyalty lies in the fidelity of the person or the heart of the person. To this extent if a person does not respond to fidelity he only has auxiliary love. This makes the other person as a necessity to the other person that creates two “I need you” statements. The first “I need you.” wherein the “I” is the mind and is only one part of the body and does not supplement for true love. The second “I need you!” stresses the fact that the Self needs the other person to supplement what we know as something missing from our life’s basic equation. Still, this equation will always be unanswerable for a long time. To be able to grasp the situation the Filipino man will have to undergo the process of knowing his partner a little more. Frequent dating is the answer to this ongoing question. Day after day after day the couple will go out and decreases through time as more and more information pass through both minds and after all, we all know “Knowledge is Power”.

In addition, love cannot be complete without its constant fights and LQ that can become QL. Fights do have their purpose in love. It is the methodology used to settle differences between the couple. It can also be a tool used for mass destruction. Fights do have a devastating effect on the body typically the brain or the psychological and neural functions that a person has but most importantly the heart. A fight can cause the break-up between two couples. Why do they break-up? The only thing present here would be the tangible vows that both have created. The cause would probably come from the Article 1, Section 1 of their vows that would mean the most important one of all the vows. Acceptance plays the big role in fights, if one cannot accept then he must leave because love without full acceptance is only love that goes one way, to the Self.

After a few more years of this one begins to wonder and ask “What is this?” and “What am I doing?” this is the starting point of knowing one’s true intentions or doubt of the existence of true love.

Nurturance and Love Expectancy

How can one Filipino hold on long enough to be able to know the truth about love? He begins asking questions such as “How long does it really take to know? Is this really it? Am I at the peak?” These questions can help him know himself. One who does not know himself does not know to love at all and we all know that not knowing to love can mean spontaneity disappearing in an instant and infatuation sets in. Love is like a friendship; one has to keep spontaneous to his partner and does not keep any secrets to him or her that would keep hanging on to his fidelity. How can one keep spontaneous to his partner? This is never a problem to the Filipino male because he is a hopeless romantic that may evolve in to a better structure. He knows what to do in any situation because there will always be a “lusot” somewhere. Spontaneity and uniqueness are two factors that contribute to the ongoing relationship of a couple. If one side gets to be tired of the other, that side becomes bored and incomplete because a man who is not spontaneous is thinking and a man who is thinking cannot be at the same time loving. Interest arouses spontaneity within one person therefore how the other presents himself or herself would greatly affect the outcome of the others spontaneity. Love therefore is dynamic and versatile to be able to survive rough winds.

What then is True Love?

In the eyes of man, true love can never ever exist this is so because what protects our thoughts is our mind and no one can pierce and read our mind. This is bogus and will never ever be true. The eyes do not know what the heart can see and if the fact above is true about the mind, I am willing to risk it. I would rather commit a mistake and be human than turn and run away from the one I love just because I am not sure. In science, one can never ever be sure without experimenting first, repeating, and repeating the experiment
repeatedly. This war against my ego I am willing to take. These are most words that a Filipino man can say to himself and proves the fact that love really is blind after all…