A DANCER.
A dancer discovers music everywhere. He knows that life in itself is an orchestra of nature’s instruments, a collection of the universe’s melodies. He sees everything around him moving rhythmically as if all things have their own cadence.
A dancer knows that this is how life works: it works in a flowing motion. Like a trained dancer, his very own reflex is to feel the beat, follow the melody and move along with the rhythm. He doesn’t fight the music, but drowns himself in it instead, savoring every note with style, as if it were the last few notes on earth. He flutters around with the music of life pulsating in his veins: the excitement, the joy, the energy: the giving away of every inch of muscles, every bead of sweat, every particle of mind.
A dancer understands perfectly that the key to everything lies in harmony, balance, and a splash of spontaneity. He knows that life is the magical tunes he had been carrying in his heart since the day he was born, and as always, he will only need to follow the tempo, surrender to the sensation and dance it away.
A SKY-GAZER.
A sky-gazer knows that looking out into space is like looking back in time. On a starry night, he’s the one who will be touched by the romantic melancholy of how the stars could have actually died a very long time ago, way before its light reached his very eyes.
A sky-gazer, thus, appreciates how his past defines the way he sees the world as he sees it now. He understands the beauty of embracing what’s gone, not to be replaced by something else (because he believes that the things of the past are irreplaceable), but to be carried inside his heart: a keepsake as he walks his way to the future. At times, it serves as a reminder—to live life to the fullest, to not holding back too much; and at other times as a blanket—to keep him warm with loving memories or to snuggle inside when things become ugly.
A sky-gazer knows that looking at the future is like gazing at the night sky. Deep down inside, we’re actually looking back in time to who we were and who we used to be. A sky-gazer receives this knowledge like something that has been written in his DNA: that life always flows to the future carrying everything from the past along, and nothing is left behind.
A LOVER.
A lover loves and nothing else matters. He knows that love isn’t pink; it can be black or white or maroon and other times bluish purple. He accepts the fact that love draws tears as much as it draws laughter, but he doesn’t mind. He understands that roses have thorns and that thorns have roses. A lover realizes the perfection that lies behind tiny imperfections, the flickers of words beneath those shy-looking eyelashes, the thirst of grape-flavored kisses inside empty wine glasses, the yearning of togetherness beyond every goodbye clenches.
A lover falls for the beauty of an unmade bed and stains of paints on a white fence, the solitude of a buzzing traffic jam and cries of seagulls above the sand, the charm of getting soaked under the rain and playing catch under the blazing sun, the fondness of plunging into a quarrel and feeling the pain of a mistake unrepaired. A lover appreciates sadness as a way to alleviate the beloved’s tears and embraces happiness as a reason to shower the beloved with marshmallow-tempered caresses and sweet-sugary sentences.
A lover knows that he has no other thirst but to love—even when he realizes that the thirst will never get quenched.
A lover loves and nothing else matters.
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*) a gift for a dancer, a sky-gazer, a lover, and a very dear friend. Kuala Lumpur, February 2012.
