I’ve always been a hopeless romantic, a melancholic to the core, and sadly no matter how much I try to cover this up, it always seems to shine through. More recently, friends have been giving comments and noting parts of me that I’d rather keep hidden. But it’s the only life I know. To love and to be loved.

The phrase “loving you till eternity” rolls off the tongue so easily, doesn’t it? We whisper it during those late night conversations when the world feels small enough to hold in our hands (I’ve been there). Scribbling it in love letters, declare it in wedding vows. Yet here’s what troubles me about it is: we are ephemeral creatures pretending to think in infinite time.

It’s an uncomfortable truth. Our bodies replace every cell within seven years. Our minds reshape themselves with each experience, each disappointment, each moment of joy. The “you” I promise to love till eternity will not be the same “you” a decade from now. The “I” making this promise will be gone too, replaced by someone who shares the same name but carries different scars, different wisdom, different fears.

Still, we make these eternal promises anyway. And maybe that’s exactly what makes us human. This beautiful, absurd capacity to reach beyond our limitations.

the heart is an unreliable narrator

I’ve found that love is a really tricky concept. There’s the part with butterflies that can’t be killed using insecticides, and of course the falling that no matter how strongly one is held can’t be evaded. In all this, I still think love is a choice. Yet because I think it's a choice, and still believe it’s the most precious avalanche of feeling, I can’t help but find myself in a pickle when thinking about it.

Here’s something I’ve noticed that haunts me: love dissipates the moment it is questioned and increases the moment it is not. The very act of examination kills what we’re trying to preserve. The moment you start analyzing whether what you feel is “real love”, whether it will last, whether it’s worth the inevitable pain, something delicate breaks. The magic becomes mechanics.

This is why the heart remains the only guide in matters of love. Not because the heart is always right (ho I wish she is, yet sadly she’s wrong most time), but because love exists in a realm where logic becomes irrelevant. Love gives the same reward as addiction, it creates a cocktail that makes rational thinking nearly impossible. The couple, literally intoxicated by love. And perhaps, just maybe that’s precisely how it's supposed to work.

But what does this mean for promises of eternity? If love operates beyond reason, how can we trust our promises to last beyond feeling?

affection can still be logical

While gold exchanges for dollars, and a car can be easily bought with liquid cash, love however is still traded by barter. You never really get the exact value of what you gave, but you hope to get what you need. This isn't cynical. It's the sad reality of human relationships. It involves exchange, though we dress it up in prettier language.

I think it’s hard to love but not impossible to cherish. There’s a distinction here that matters more than I initially understood. Love demands reciprocity, creates expectations, requires constant feeding and maintenance. It’s exhausting in its needs. Cherishing, however, is something you can do alone. You can cherish someone’s personality, their quirks, their impact on your life, without demanding anything in return.

When we say loving you till eternity, maybe what we really mean is cherishing you till eternity. Because cherishing doesn’t require the other person to remain unchanged. You can cherish who someone was, who they are, and whoever they become. Cherishing accommodates growth, forgives transformation, accepts the inevitable changes that time brings.

This realization brings both relief and sadness. Relief because it’s sustainable. Sadness because it admits love's limitations. And you know you’re up for it. You’ll be annoyed, angered, saddened and feel so down and unappreciated yet you should ideally keep loving.

the weight of forever

Eternity is such a long time. What's more distasteful is death in and of itself. We make these “eternal” promises while knowing, deep down, that death will interrupt every single one of them. It's the ultimate void paradox. Promising forever while living in the temporary.

You know, there are studies in attachment theory suggest that our capacity for love is partly shaped by our relationship with mortality. We love fiercely partly because we know it won’t last forever (I wrote a bit on this before). The shadow of ending makes every moment more precious, but also more painful.

Ephemeral beings that think in infinite time. Fallible hearts that see themselves as capable of perfect love. Corrigible souls that believe they can promise the impossible. We promise eternity while living in moments. We seek permanence while embodying change.

Unlike many other emotions, love operates on its own timeline. It doesn’t follow the rules of reason or efficiency. It makes us promise things we can’t guarantee, feel things we can’t explain, and believe things we can’t prove. And tbh it feels stupid.

final thoughts

When someone dies, does our love for them die too? This question haunts me. We continue loving people who no longer exist, continue feeling their presence, continue being shaped by relationships that technically ended. In this sense, maybe we do love “till eternity”. Not because we live forever, but because love, once real, creates permanent changes in who we are.

Yo9u never really stop loving someone you once loved unless you never loved them to start with. They become a part of you. A part that’s almost impossible to part with. Because it’s the only life you knew at a time. And this is why I think It’s beautiful to care about people and to cherish them till eternity. It's even more beautiful if those we cherish and care about cherish us as well. I doubt it could ever be equal, though.

Love asymmetry is normal, perhaps inevitable. One person always loves a little more, needs a little more, gives a little more. This knowledge doesn’t make love less valuable. It makes it more precious because it's voluntary. And maybe that's enough.

That’s all for today. Loving you even when I’m forgotten.

Jhoe.