The Genius of Broken Hearts

(with excerpt from my journal entry dated February 16, 2012, a Thursday)

Earlier this morning, while I was gargling, I heard Ate Gina singing “I love you, goodbye” in the backyard, and then the song “It’s the end of the world” (Skeeter Davis) came to mind, and then I realized, for most people, the end of the world is so much easier to deal with than failure in love. Meaning, there are people out there who would rather that the world ended rather than face up to a broken heart. Ahehe.

I think it’s got something to do with the need to forget already—the need to get over with the emotion, the need to be shocked and shaken out of the…what? Stupor? Hypnosis? The spell?

And with what? With an experience that’s somewhat more mind-boggling or shocking, whose impact would “replace,” in the mind, the “breakup of the century.”  Ahehe.

Just now, I thought of the movie with Adam Sandler owning some kind of remote control device that can make time stop, go fast forward or in slow motion, etc. Somehow, having a broken heart can make time stop and everything else go still.

Years ago, I thought of madness as some kind of inability to cope with a difficult "present." That since you can’t deal with the present, you get stuck in the past. Or the future. Or any other time in any other dimension, other than the here and now. Parang Shaider. Naka-time-space warp ang mga baliw. Either they’re trapped in the past (either traumatically or euphorically) or they’re trapped in the future (or in some futuristic world of their own making) gaya ni Cita Aztals. Tama ba ang spelling ko ng name ni Cita Aztals?

Anyway, the point is, having a broken heart is some kind of temporary madness. Just me. There’s a temporary inability to focus or deal with present circumstances. I guess that’s why I think it’s wise to be able to detach oneself from one’s self, and see things from the perspective of another person. Or from the perspective of eternity—if you’re feeling profound enough—by thinking of the situation from the point of a great great grandchild. “When my grandma was this age, she had her heart badly broken….etc.”

And then we see things happening in our life just the way we review, say, the tragedies of William Shakespeare. I mean, did Romeo and Juliet actually live? Did their tragic love affair really happen? We make our own reflections and our own judgments and conclusions, foremost of which is that broken hearts are a universal experience.

Now, what you do with a broken heart is up to your genius, of course. You can write a play about it, or a novel in which you transform yourself in to a vampire’s object of obsession. Hey, you can make money out of things like that these days.

But then, wouldn’t that classify you as “mad” also? Hmm…probably. Pero temporary madness lang naman ‘yun. Nagkakatalo lang sa control. Ang mga totoong baliw, walang control sa detachment nila from reality. Pero ‘yung mga gifted…or, okay, yung mga may konting sayad na lang, at least may control pa rin. Tama ba?

Just now, naalala ko si Akira Kurosawa. Sa pelikula niyang “Dreams,” sabi niya, “Man is a genius when he dreams.” Or something to that effect. Come to think of it, karamihan sa mga panaginip natin, puro “kabaliwan” lang. Walang logic. Walang rational structure. Pero, our sleeping selves readily accept them  or tolerate them like they’re the most natural thing.

Teka pala. What about nightmares? I’ll think about it some other time. Right now, I can only conclude that this world is so much more alive and so much more colorful because of broken hearts. And dreams. And madness…or genius. Whatever. Chapter!