Senti Queen

“I’m such a sucker for romance!”  Hearing this statement from a male friend who has a highly intellectual image definitely surprised me.  Looking at him in that perspective roused the romanticist in me.  Why not?  It’s not every day that I hear a guy admitting downright his romantic side.  And I think that’s a romantic thing in itself.

Days ago, some friends and I had a little discussion on what we consider as romantic per se.  Yes, we have our respective standards for romance that we just have to accept and respect one another’s views.  As one of them said, it is relative.  What may be romantic for some may not be the case for others. Bottom line, however, is that romance should be mutually felt by both parties in a love relationship no matter how jaded romance can sometimes get.

I believe that majority of us, in one way or another, is a sucker for romance– romantic affairs, romantic novels, romantic movies, romantic situations, romantic dialogues, romantic stories, and romantic ideas.  Whether we admit it or not, we get kilig everytime we see or experience romance right before our very eyes.  In my case, I haven’t gotten over yet my penchant for watching romantic-comedy movies.  Probably I’ll never will.

The dictionary defines romance as something which depicts colorful and fanciful events, scenes, or occurrences with extraordinary conditions appealing to the imagination, usually in the name of chivalrous love and devotion.  In my own words, romance is simply going the extra mile to exert that extra effort in making someone extra happy which, in return, makes us feel extraordinarily good.

Of course, I had my share of this kilig factor.  I border between insanely romantic and objectively idealistic (whatever this means). I don’t really give a damn no matter how baduy or corny I sometimes become in the eyes of others. Want proofs?  In my own standards, the following are some of the most romantic things that I’ve done for a person (not necessarily for one and the same person):

• I arranged for a candlelight dinner consisting only of tapsilog. (Sorry, having a candlelight dinner in a high-end restaurant is simply impractical!)
• I gave him a CD compilation of his favorite songs. (I searched every music hub in the Net just to complete it.)
• I left a single rose in his favorite color inside his car. (I color sprayed the poor flower in blue!)
• I composed a poem in his honor (first letter of every line spelled out his name).
• I gave him a jar full of 366 short love notes printed on different colored papers. (Yup, that’s for a year so I didn’t have to text him every morning. Hehe..)
• I sang “You” by the Carpenters for him in front of a crowd in my office uniform! (How embarrassing but I gladly did it for love.)
• I gave him long letters as birthday gifts (always with two other items to make it three as in i-love-you).
• I hugged him like there was no tomorrow when he least expected it.

In return, here are some of the most romantic things that someone did for me (again, not necessarily from the same person):

• He arranged for a 45-minute cruise on a rainy Friday evening. (It reminded me so much of Titanic!)
• He bought me an ice cream while we were walking along Manila Bay.
• He brought me on top of a hill and we watched the sunset together.
• He played his composition on the piano while lovingly glancing at me.
• He brought me to his alma mater in high school and we looked for his old chair inside their classroom.
• He gave me a poem after a fight which he wrote on an office stationery. (And in turn, I had the poem glass laminated into a small paperweight!)
• He called me up at two o’ clock in the morning just to say he was thinking of me.
• He edited my thesis proposal while I was busy eating some pizza in front of him. (Yup, I find that romantic. Haha..)
• He brought me to a beautiful garden and said “How I wish time stands still.”

Haaayy.. May these lists increase. I may not be the wealthiest person on earth to stage the most extravagant display of love and devotion but hey, I have the power and the means to turn something ordinary to extraordinary in my own little ways. I won’t get tired of doing these things for someone I really love. After all, it’s not the thing, thought, or effort that counts. 

At the end of every failed romance, it was the love I gave and the love I got in return nourished by mutually carried out romantic gestures that mattered more.