Bless Me God For I Have Loved

Dear God,


A lover is just a selfish animal out to satisfy its own instinctive needs, I once thought. A man blissfully relishing a woman’s embrace is no different from a heartless lion feasting on a gazelle’s entrails. Both creatures derive pleasure from their respective acts. Both acts were committed as a result of biological impulses that are beyond the creatures’ control. A lemming who throws itself over a cliff just because its instinct tells it to do so is a fool. A man who deprives himself of sleep and pleasure just to make a girl happy because his infatuated heart compels him to do so is a fool. An eagle that flies across an unfamiliar ocean to look for prey without knowing how far its flight would take it is doomed to run out of breath and plunge to the sea one day. A man who pledges to dedicate all his life to a woman without knowing how much that woman would ask him to give or how little he would get in return, without asking how long he would have to keep spreading his vast wings in a long flight called passion, is a mindless daredevil bound to lose his wings and plunge into the deep ocean of loneliness one day.

As I lay in bed one lonely night, staring through the windows’ translucent curtains, watching the full moon gradually descend from the zenith to the horizon, while the crickets hummed in a melancholic chorus—as if attempting to soothe a restless, long-suffering creature--, while the nocturnal birds agonizingly chirped and flapped their wings in the dark, while the disturbed felines affectionately exchanged long, mild purrs, while the romantic wind strummed the countless leaves to create a powerful, musical rustle, I finally found myself confronting the truth. I was the animal. I was irrational. I was the daredevil and the fool. I was crossing an unknown ocean in the dark, running out of breath but still flapping my wounded wings. For despite the suffering and the pain, the follies and irrationalities, the love in me was still strong enough to sustain this crazy flight. Because I was in love. Because I was willing to go through more pain for that love.


Why do things have to be that way, God? Didn’t you teach us to love because you wanted us, your beloved children, to be happy in this world? Yet for love, for the one thing that is the ultimate source of all happiness, we have to suffer so much.

How does happiness begin? Through contentment, of course. How does contentment begin? Through love. And how, my God, does love begin? It always starts with a belief.

If you hand a colorful handkerchief to a wounded, dying soldier without saying anything to him, do you think he’d even care to reach for that piece of cloth? Would he spend the last few seconds of his life forcing himself to move his limb despite the pain he’s have to bear in doing so? Absolutely not. But tell him that the handkerchief you’re giving him is the ultimate tribute of his countrymen to his heroism, make him believe that that handkerchief is the most important thing that can be had by a fallen warrior, and I assure you, that soldier would be more than happy to accept your gift. And he would die a blissful death. Love happens in a similar way. It happened to me that way.

Before a man can fall in love, he must start convincing himself that one woman is better than any other. He needs to believe that she is the best gift that God can give any man, that she is more important than anything in this world. He must build a wall that separates her from all the other women, a wall that separates the perfect girl from the others, the paragon from the ordinary diamonds. Because without these beliefs, there wouldn’t be any love. Without them, there wouldn’t be any special pleasure in being embraced by her; there would be no bliss in being kissed by her, no extraordinary happiness in knowing that she cares. Without these beliefs her embrace, her kiss and her care would mean no more than those of a stranger. And there lies the man’s tragedy.

No man is perfect. No man is omniscient like you, my God. That’s why it impossible for me to always know correctly whether a woman is your gift to me…or your gift to someone else. All I can do is to make a guess--to gamble. Yes, unbelievably, the search for love starts with one dangerous gamble. And when that guess proves to be wrong, when the gamble fails to pay off, I would have to pay dearly. Because I would have to destroy all the beliefs I have held on to about her. I would have to destroy the wall that separates her from the rest of the women, the wall that I myself built.


A lot of people say that no man should cry over one woman because there are millions more out there who can replace her. Right. But for a passionate lover, those millions of women are almost impossible to see. Why? Because by the time a man’s heart bleeds for a woman, he has already built that impervious wall which separates her beloved girl from the rest of humanity, the same wall that kept him from believing that there’s someone better out there, the wall that guarantees his perpetual fidelity to her.

“Should I destroy that wall?” I asked myself. Of course I should! And I certainly could. But how easy would it be for anyone to destroy something he had worked so hard for to build? Would it be easy for you, my God, to destroy this universe that you created for us? Would it be easy for Leonardo Da Vinci to burn his Mona Lisa? Would it be easy for Shah Jahan to demolish the Taj Mahal? Damn! That wall was my masterpiece. That was a monument to the greatest bliss that I could possibly have in this life. And you expect to just destroy it? But unfortunately, I just had to.

I know it’s possible to have a romantic relationship with a woman without having those beliefs and without having to build that wall. But that relationship would be devoid of love. And because of that, it would be devoid of happiness as well. What message are you trying to give me, God? Are you trying to tell me that your children ought not to search for the kind of happiness that I had searched for? That we are better off choosing no to love just to avoid getting hurt? Or are you telling me to moderate my love so I could also moderate my pain at the cost of moderating my happiness?

If you want all of us to love less and suffer less, why the hell do you make love so tempting? And why do you keep telling us to love one another? To all my questions, your answer is nothing but silence. I assume it’s because you want me to find the answers from deep within myself. Well, I don’t know if this is the right one but this is the only answer that my heart can give—you want me to realize that love is the source of the ultimate happiness but the ultimate happiness can only be had if one is willing to take the risk of having to bear the ultimate pain. Loving a woman makes it possible for a man to feel bliss in her embrace. But it also guarantees that the man shall shed tears when she leaves him. Loving a child makes it possible for a parent to be happy even when doing the most backbreaking tasks. But it also guarantees that the parent shall grieve painfully when the child dies. It is simply impossible to be totally happy without love. And it is impossible to love without having the courage to bear the worst pain.

Is that really how you always wanted things to be? Is that how love is supposed to work? Because if that’s how you intended things to be, I just can’t help but think of you as a psychopath! Yes, my God, a psychopath. When you tell us to love and be brave enough to suffer for the loss of that love, you are a psychopath who aims a gun at a child, tells the child to build a sandcastle and, if the sand castle crumbles or if it turns out to be not beautiful enough for him, shoots the child in the head. That’s exactly what you do. You tell us to build our sandcastles of love, and if we fail to build the perfect sandcastle, when we fail to find the right love, you shoot us in the head with your bullets of pain. But if we succeed in building the sandcastle that can impress you, we become extremely happy. We celebrate and shed tears of joy. Because we know that you won’t shoot us. The love you gave us creates the ultimate happiness. But that happiness is just a happiness in knowing that we shall not bleed. And if we know that we can’t bleed for someone, if we know that we can’t shed tears for someone, we know that we are not in love. Bliss simply can’t exist without the threat of sorrow.

And I can’t truly love without you poking the cold gun of loneliness against my head.

Having heard everything I said, you must be wondering why I’m still talking to you, why I still believe in you. You wanna know why? Because it feels good to know that someone up there can be hurt by my blasphemous words! Because it feels good to believe that at least there’s one person out there who bleeds for me. And if you bleed for me, it means….It means that I don’t have to bleed so much after all.

Damn it! I’m fooling myself. But isn’t happiness just an art of fooling oneself? Two soldiers go to war. One believes the war will be won. The other believes otherwise. They both die before the war ends. Who do you think will have lived a happier wartime life by the time their lives end? A man and a woman get married and stay together for fifty years. The man loves the woman and believes that she loves him, too. The woman doesn’t love the man, period. By the time they die, who do you think will have had a happier life between the man and the woman?

I want to be rational. But what’s the point in being rational anyway? Why do people choose to be rational in the first place? When a person decides which career to pursue, why should he carefully weigh his options? When a woman decides whether or not she should accept a marriage proposal, why does she have to think about it thoroughly? Why does she have to listen to reason? When the prehistoric men were deciding how to hunt down a beast, why did they have to be rational about their plans? No matter how you look at it, the ultimate aim of rationality is survival. But what’s so good about survival? Do animals strive to survive just to feed? Or do they also relish the pleasure of being able to feed? Do people struggle to survive just to spend another day struggling to survive? Or do they do so because they want to love…and be happy because of that love? When there’s no love there to be felt, when survival does not promise happiness and survival is all that rationality can offer, what the hell is so rational about being rational?

Why hadn’t I thought about that last question at an earlier point in my life? Why the hell did I have to be so rational in the first place? What were all those dreams for? What were all those sufferings for? What were all those sacrifices of mine for if I’m gonna pass up on every opportunity to…satisfy my primitive instinct—the one that compels me to want to care for someone and feel that someone cares for me?

One more time I shall try not to be too rational. One more time I shall fool myself. Because I now choose to believe that there is a divine reason for all this pain. I choose to believe, shamelessly, that there is something good that can come out of this emotional hell. That the universe still follows a divine, though not necessarily perfect, order. And you, my God, are the personification of that order. That’s why still believe in you. Even when you are silent. I have no proof that you exist. I have no proof that you don’t. But rather than be an agnostic, I’ll just take a gamble on you. I am making a guess, the same way I do when I begin to fall in love.

So now, my God, I beg you to forgive me for my blasphemies. For no matter how much I want to punish you, I still am willing to accept that you are far more powerful than me. I still am willing to believe that you can teach me to build the perfect sandcastle of love.

Bless me God for I am beginning to lose my faith. Bless me God for I am breaking down. Bless me, for I need badly need the strength to begin the quest for happiness anew. Bless me, God, for I have loved.


Your child,

Ernest