One morning, when I was deep cleaning the second floor of our newly renovated house, while our things were being segregated into what to dispose of and keep, I found a Fujifilm envelope containing the remaining photos I had as a baby up until elementary school. I stared at it for a full minute as I slowly felt nostalgia hitting me with memories I barely even remembered. I saw a photograph of my mother holding me—she was about 25 years old, young, and had so many years ahead of her as a new mom. I also had another with my father in a fast-food restaurant at age three, I presume, and he was still adjusting to the lifestyle of working in the urban city. I smiled at a picture of my grandfather and grandmother taken at the altar of the church; they were still strong enough to go on adventures with their grandchildren.
All these photos made me realize that the irony of nostalgia is that, although lonesome at times, it also brings comfort from the knowledge we hold about the love that came before, despite almost being forgotten. It lies in the eyes of those who were loved in the past and the love that continuously lives on as a reminder of how we are fueled by it.
It reminded me of the story “Tell Us a Story, Mom” by Cheenee Astilla. It was when love was realized through photographs of them. The phrase that struck me goes, “I realized that the love reflected in those images wasn’t just about how other people saw me. It was about embracing my true self and recognizing the unconditional love and acceptance that had always existed within me.”
Oftentimes, we search for love in all the wrong places without realizing it. I, too, have felt the need to hold love so close as if I lacked it, afraid for it to disappear. And yet, along the way, as I looked at my old photographs, I realized that they give me the privilege to keep nostalgia safe for me to tend to and cherish along the way; and through this, I am reminded of the love that already lives within me.
Love can only be fully realized through the reflection in the lenses of the people around us. It gives us more meaning to love ourselves and to love others with the purpose of yielding the good out of each other.
Although it is human for us to be afraid of knowing love and committing to its ideals, all our attempts at love—whether it entails us to hold on to it or let it go—are ways for us to see the things in our lives that already exist. The story of Jaymar Salazar Chavez, titled “Behind Bamboos, Across Cracks,” reminds us of this: that love, as beautiful as it is, can be too fragile to hold if not handled with care and if not discerned with compassion. As human as it is for us to desire affection, we may hold on to something so strongly that it can lead to selfishness—to have something of someone at least, rather than nothing at all. The story is a reminder of the reality we need to ground ourselves in—the opposite of the beauty of love, where sacrifices are no longer for the sake of the other but for self-interest.
And so, I hope I may be able to meditate on the fact that love is already available to me; I no longer need to force it into my life for it to stay. We have various ways to rejoice in the ways we are capable of giving love and to find peace, knowing we can create it. It already lives within us anyway, and we only ever need to learn and relearn how to emphasize it—through our photographs, dreams, or anything we find ourselves defining it beautifully.
by June