“Kiss your life. Accept it, just as it is. Today. Now. So that those moments of happiness you’re waiting for don’t pass you by.” ~ Philip Bosman

The Kiss at the Park (Guangzhou, China)
© Jojie Alcantara 2008

I felt like a voyeur peeping at them from my van window, as we rounded past the intertwined couple in a wide open park filled with old people doing the tai chi one chilly morning.  The two were oblivious to everything around them, cocooned in a world all their own. I can only imagine the passion brewing, stories formulating in my mind — he must be going somewhere far away,  or she must have done something wrong and he forgave her, or she just accepted his engagement proposal. Or is this a goodbye kiss?

Why are we so swift to judge a rush of blatant emotion? Why can’t such public display of affection be just normal for people who bond with love? Because we are swept back in the days of our youth, once bursting with untainted hope and ideals for a lasting romance. We were once in their shoes. Sadly, we’ve outgrown our pair.

As we grow older and supposedly wiser, the notion of good old romance is overcome with reality, cloaked with cynicism, marred by distrust, encouraged by television and the media. Such a scene is scoffed at. Young people just holding hands for example, would elicit snide remarks from my friends like, “wait till you marry,” or in the case of my spinster friend who snarls in a whisper, “Oh that’s just in the beginning… he will eventually leave you for someone younger!” Ouch.

How funny it is to leave a world of wonder and excitement behind, only to settle down in the dark corridors of adulthood where emotional insecurity beckons. Anxiety creeps in as you wonder where those prominent frown lines come from in the mirror. They weren’t there yesterday.  Adults have learned to close off, tone down, or resist erratic feelings soon as they recognize them. Raging hormones are only associated with puberty and midlife crisis. Any rush of passion is blamed on alcohol. Infatuation becomes childish, not endearing.

How better it is to just let go in wild abandon for a splitting moment, and own it without excuses.  How nicer it is to come across such a physical gesture of emotion in public, and we say, “oh how sweet”, but really mean it.

So today, go kiss your life and wish others the same. The magic may just come back.