Bluer than Blue — Regine Velasquez Cover

This is one classic break up song. I heard it on the taxi on the way home from work and wanted to write about it. I just love this version by Regine Velasquez. Regine has gone through bad break-ups and “bad” relationships where she was seen as the other woman who broke up couples. She’s in a relationship with singer/songwriter Ogie Alcasid right now, which started out weird but is ending happily.

When you’re bluer than blue and sadder than sad, maybe you just need to wait and let things turn a page, and see that things do turn out well in the end.

Fr. Jojo Magadia, in a homily several years ago, called it A LONGER VIEW OF THINGS. When things are bad and not turning out as well as we had hoped, we need to take a longer view–a view that goes beyond the here and now into tomorrow and the future where things will turn out better, or at least when hurts are less hurting as before.

This LONGER VIEW allows us two things: 1) HOPE and 2) PERSPECTIVE.

HOPE is knowing that things will make sense in the end. Sometimes things turn out better, but at other times, it doesn’t. Hope, on the one hand, is seeing bonum futurum arduum posibile– a good future that is difficult but possible.

But hope is not just about things turning out better, it is about events/loss/suffering making sense. Jesuit Fr. Ferriols, one of my philosophy teachers, talked about the Filipino word for meaning: KAHULUGAN, and pointed out that it comes from the word hulog, which means “to fall”. Meaning then, is about things falling into place. Finding hope is like that. Hope is about things falling into place. When things fall into place, there is meaning. There is peace.

The twin of HOPE is PERSPECTIVE. It is a choice of context or reference from which to see things. There are two things important here. One is that perspective is a choice. Seeing the glass half-full or half-empty is really up to us. The second important thing is that perspective always needs a context and a vantage point. And for us, the vantage point is always looking back at what has already happened. Only God has the capacity to see our “past”, present and “future” all at the same time. And because our vantage point is one of “looking back”, then there is a need to wait. For things to take its course. For another chapter in life to come. For life to turn another page.

Perspective is seeing things with new eyes–eyes filled with hope, eyes filled with the sense that things will turn out better or at least that things will fall into place and make sense. Some events in the past may have hurt us so much, but we realize that we have the capacity to survive whatever life gives. And some of us do not just survive but thrive.

And while life may seem BLUER THAN BLUE right now, we do hope that things will be better FOREVERMORE. :p

1. Waiting
2. Real Greatness
3. Of Fathers and Kites and Whistling for Hope
4. Catch Me I’m Falling