I lifted the paragraph below from Fr. Jerry Orbos' column in today's Sunday Inquirer:
"We all have our comfort zones which we want to keep, preserve and maintain, and even prolong and broaden. When love comes knocking at our doors, our tendency is often to shut it off. And we are good at making alibis for doing this. Love has reasons which reason itself does not know. When will you go beyond your rationalizations and endless computations, and just simply start loving without limits and conditions? Stupid? Crazy? Well, one must be really a little stupid and crazy when the topic is love, and really stupid and crazy when one loves."
I don't know if Fr. Jerry has ever experienced falling in love. After all, he still is a man and if ever he has gone dangerously close to leaving the priesthood for a woman, we will never know. But I do agree with everything that he wrote above.
However, Fr. Jerry may not truly understand what a woman goes through when she's in the threshold of falling in love. Over the years, when a woman allows herself to share her thoughts and feelings with someone, spends time in getting to know him and eventually allowing the friendship to grow into a more intimate level, she has already given a very special part of herself to this person. It is a gift that she has given unconditionally several times in her life. When she loses him for one reason or another, the tears take time to dry, so much so that when next time overtures of Love lurks outside her door, she has already built a wall around herself and learns to say, "hanggang diyan ka nalang muna" (that's as far as you can go). You just don't don't don't want to be involved with anybody after a series full of goodbyes.
Fr. Jerry, its not that we are shutting off Love. It is because of Love that we learned to shut the door to avoid getting hurt again. One thing I do know is that the next time love comes knocking, I will take the risk and open the door, praying that this one will be for keeps. Until then, its status quo.