Kilig: Romantic Miracle, Feeling Butterfly in Your Stomach - Filipino
Do that butterflies only dance when we are young? If not, where is the road to find them?
Love enters our hearts in far different ways.
Sometimes love blooms in your heart, smooth and unexpected. Possibly a pinkish-white colored blossom opens her chest and begins all the journey among vividly green leaves, and then ready-to-invade branches cover all the fields of heart.
Sometimes you feel a naughty tickle inside your chest. That tickle turns out to be a breeze, then a wind, and finally a storm.
Sometimes you lose your appetite. It is impossible to regard it as a gift from God to lose weight; you forget how to eat something without feeling a never-still butterfly in your stomach. You’re in trouble because neither you can live in this mood nor you’re able to get rid of all this thrill and miracle.
In Filipino, kilig is the word for that butterfly in your stomach feeling in the very first phase of falling in love.
Have you ever experienced such a feeling?
Does it feel centuries past so you can only see it in movies?
Even so, do you ever consider feeling it once more in your maturity years?
Recently I watched The Idea of You where Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine play the leading roles. At first, it sounded like an ordinary romantic comedy just to spend some sweet time with some wine or popcorn, maybe both if I’m crazy enough to wake up having gained extra kilos in the morning.
Anne Hathaway was beautiful, especially when you consider she was playing a mother of a 16-year-old teenager. She was thin, graceful, beautiful, smart and had a very good gusto for art. Nicholas Galitzine was awesome. The love scenes were great, and so on.
The story is about the love affair between a mature woman and a young man where the woman is 16 years older than the man. On top of that, the man is a very famous popstar. Social repression, non-acceptance, the self-blaming inner reflection of the mother, and the fact that how cruel people and a whole society for people making different choices than themselves. The game of ruthlessly pulling in the sheep who chose to step off the herd.
However, at some point, I realized that I was putting myself in the mother’s shoes and questioning how incredible to feel the glittering miracles of love in the same way you lived when you were young.
I wonder, those butterflies are only active when you are young?
Or, are they acceptable by the society only when you are young enough? After you get the title of “mature woman” you’re expected to carry the sign of “Don’t worry folks! All the crazy feelings are all over, I’m volunteer to be a mother sworn to keep society in order. Sleep in piece in your beds.”
Are we really carrying that sign?
Obviously yes, unless we are objecting, and not caring remaining outside of the herd. Whereas I can see thousand of those society-relieving signs on women’s t-shirts in the streets, colorful enough to fool ourselves.
Keep questioning! No matter what the matter is.
Feeling absolutely sure of nothing is the key to victory.
I wish you a week where you get a chance to feel something different than your ordinary life. If not butterflies in your stomach, encounter cheerful birds singing the songs of joy.
— Gulsun
We are made of stories—that is, of words.
I hope you have enjoyed my writing. If so, you may consider becoming a subscriber to receive a piece every Friday.
Hitting simply ❤️ at the top or bottom or leaving a comment will let me know about your thoughts and feelings, which is so valuable to me.
No, kilig is absolutely not reserved for the young. I believe it is, however, a particularly special and more rare feeling once one has “been around the block” a few times. 😊🦋💗