“When things get rough, I like to walk with you”-Jason Mraz. This line is from my favorite song entitled “Everything is sound”. I think this specific line can summarize the essence of having someone willing to be with you as you continue your journey. But how can you really tell that the people you chose to be with are going to stay with you all throughout? When can we say that our friends are true? And specially, are we really sure that every feeling of being loved is real?

 

            In my life today, I am contented and somehow secure with all the relationships I built from the past years. I have good friends with me, my ever supportive family, and a very special guy, these people helped me feel so much loved. But in the middle of all the happiness, I often stop and think if all the persons I know are treating me in a true manner. Specially, when we started discussing about the level of interaction. In every specific level, I started sorting out all the people I know. And somehow, I’m kind of disappointed. Only few of them reach the highest level. And unfortunately most of them are the people called- “lulubog-lilitaw” people. And how did I thought of this? Well, you can’t blame me of calling them like that, they are the people who would be texting and calling me just when they need me. A sad truth, indeed, but it is reality. There are people with this kind of attitude. I met a lot of them already, I was once like them. But I think conscious struck me faster. That is why, I somehow started to find it hard trusting people around me. But I think it is in man’s nature that we trust people easily especially when we think we have something in common.

 

            Somehow it is the “sameness’ that makes a relationship start. A relationship, not specifically the romantic one, starts from a small conversation with all the things you know and you have in common. Just like in Facebook, we may add friends of our friends which is actually called “Mutual friends”. And we start mingling with them. We often share specific details about ourselves with them, our birthday, name, address and so on. Are these information, alone, enough to define us, for us to be accepted fully? I think those are just the stepping stones to knowing each other more. You see, it takes one step at a time.

But I am confident in saying that the only thing that will make this relationship grow fonder, is when both parties accept the differences one possesses. It is when one become one-of-you according to Virgilio Enriquez. It is when one started to care for them and when one become not just a faceless “other” but a companion. Maybe there are people who would think that they could live their lives without being with others. But they are definitely wrong. According to what I understood, it is the others who help us define or know who we really are. We know that we are unique because of these “others” but they sometimes become just like us, but not exactly us. Those are not the only reasons why we need others or the so-called “Kapwa”, there are plenty of reasons depending on how we perceive other people. One thing is sure, a man cannot be called as a man unless he/she lives with others.

 

            After all the realizations, who will really be there for me, someone who is whole-heartedly willing to walk with me when things are rough? I am not really asking for someone who would be singing that lyrics for me, but someone who would walk-the-talk. And I almost forgot, I want to be with people who would accept me as me, not because of other things.

 

            I will not prolong this anymore; to summarize everything in life we meet a lot of people. There will be some people that will just come and go leaving nothing. But most of them will come and soon go, but will surely leave good memories to us. In this kind of people, we don’t just mingle with them, because of them we are valued, loved and cared, and most especially we do not just exist with them, we learn from them and learn with them.