Regardless of the Answers

So... I'm currently reading "I'll be Right There" by Shin Kyung Sook (which I so dearly love, very very much), and I came across this one sentence in the book the other day:

"You should only ask someone if they love you if you love them, regardless of what their answers might be."

(Jung Yoon, p. 60)

I dogeared this page. 

Well, I've dogeared a lot of pages in the book anyway, with so many highlights here and there (that's how I treat a book I love, by making them appear so well-loved). I even copied 2 passages from the book and pasted them in my thick notebook. 

But reading the one sentence above again and again, there's something in it that strikes a chord with me. It makes me remember someone - someone I once liked, really really liked but now no longer (it's been years, he has his own life but nonetheless I somewhat still occasionally remember him, and how we were once). Well, he never knew about my feelings back then. I kept it hidden, unsaid, though doubtlessly somewhat both of us actually knew. I wasn't sure about his feelings though, but I had my own suspicion. 

If I were to be given a chance to meet him again, should I say to him that I'd once liked him very much? Regardless of what his answers would be? Could I do that? 

Now that I think of it, if the moment was right, I think I would. And could. Just for the sake of saying what once I held so dearly, that it had once been real to me. Even though it's late. 

Right?

Disappointed.

When it's not only one person who makes me disappointed but two... three perhaps, until it just seems to me that everyone in my life decided to conspire against me to make me feel immensely miserable... would it be so wrong of me then if I started to ask myself pathetic questions... whether I'm just that weak, so quick to succumbing myself to sadness? 

Whether I'm not that valuable, that people just disregard me and my thoughts easily? 

Whether I'm just selfish for having set a bar of expectations or wishes, although I only keep them within myself, unsaid? 

Or is it precisely because I don't show my feelings openly and honestly, and only resort to joking about it that it eventually sends the wrong signal to people? 

Or is it because I'm just too sensitive, too quick to judge people when they themselves actually do not have any intention to disappoint me? 

Poetry in Pictures?

I really love Instagram, you see, and the no. 1 reason would be because of the lovely feeds that I get to see from users all over the world. The feeds I'll always enjoy looking are those of food and travel (mainstream enough?) and illustration and architecture!

Seeing the streams of beautiful pictures everyday, I came to realize one thing I didn't know before.

The Earth is naturally studded with a lot of interesting, beautiful gem-like places (of course that's common knowledge). While Grand Canyon or the range of the Apls or the stretch of glaciers that you can spot in Greenland are truly unbeatable sights that would make you breathless as you wish you could be there, in the real location, and be the one taking pictures of the majestic wonder yourself (because they are sublime, like Alain de Botton also mentioned in his book "The Art of Travel") (which of course, would also make stunning photographs), I think I find my preference in looking at a photo that has a composition of civilization in it. 

Civilization, or the remnants of civilization, in the same picture with nature - no matter how small, how insignificant it would look like against the greatness, wholeness of nature itself.

One example, something like the ruins of Machu Picchu. Yes, all that's left in this place may be only skeletons of stone walls, built high on and around mountain peaks. But still, humans used to live in this place; they existed. The legacy of their age and cultures, though, are forever imprinted against the jaw-dropping backdrop of nature, a beauty that seems so ethereal.

Or the villages in Cinque Terre, Italy, where the houses were built against the terraced cliff on a steep landscape. The coastal towns overlook the Mediterranean sea, the walls and roofs of its houses are constantly beaten by the sun and weather and wind; and there's even a potential danger of landslide. But still, the overall picture of it is that, humans strive to survive in order to live in this world, alongside with nature.

There's poetry in such pictures, don't you think so?

At least, that's what I think.