Manila — My friend is engaged to be married. This will be her third. She doesn't call her first two as total disasters because she may have learned a thing or two about being in relationships that required a contract; only that the relationships did not work out.
But this third, she said, is "The One." I was happy to hear that. I was happy that she will get to dream about her third time to walk an aisle with her partner waiting for her at the end of that pathway, and whether that lane she will be walking on is a cold concrete, a grassy ground or fine sand and seawater where she will think about walking barefoot.
But one thing is most certain — she will have flowers on her windblown hair.
In fact, I am happy for all people who find the love of their life, the one they will get to spend days and years alongside each other, have conversations together and travel together. This can go on until old age and until that time when, perhaps, they will hold hands on their deathbeds and look back to a life well lived – together.
I was with another friend one night while waiting for a ride home in the rain when we saw an old couple sharing an umbrella. We watched them stay close to each other in the cold rain. When a cab stopped for them, they helped each other as they got in and settled. The car drove away with the couple looking at each other, their shadows lit only by the streetlights, like an ending of a romantic movie scene.
This made me and my friend stay quiet for a while, our thoughts dripping along with the rain. "Will I ever get to have something like that?" he asked me. Before I can shoot back, he answered his own question with, "Nah, I don't know."
So how do you find "The One?"
Romance aside, experts say selecting a life partner and making the decision to be married to each other deserves the utmost in thinking, consideration and discussion. You can throw in prayer and contemplation, or some rituals you have to go through to see if you made the right choice.
But to others, it is not even about selection. It is about something that just happens, and, in the grand scheme of things, they happen for a reason and purpose. Finding the big, strong, passionate, massive love that just happened even if they were not even looking or expecting already tells them that this person is definitely "The One."
And because they seem like they happen just once is a lifetime, "The One" is the person they must hold onto for the rest of their life because they make an impact with such gravity that no one else can ever quite match or replace.
It may seem funny but people who find the one or the love of their life may even morph into something incomprehensible because of that love.
It may have been a coincidence, or, if we go by the movies we watch, a cosmic force in the universe that was meant to happen, a chance, a serendipity or simply, destiny.
I am in awe at people who agree to face each other in a ceremony and promise to have and to hold. So, when my friend will walk in a flowing, flowery dress to meet her future husband, I would want to see her again someday with the same person she called "The One" driving away in two shadows inside a car under the streetlights.
Diana G. Mendoza is a freelance journalist based in Manila.