I remember when I was in college, when I had a crush on my professor, a lawyer who taught our Philippine Constitution 101 subject. During one of his lectures, he recommended that we watch The Notebook, the film based on Nicholas Sparks’ novel. He highly recommended it to us, his students, encouraging us to take to heart the lessons the movie had to offer.
Curious about what made the film worth recommending, a classmate and I decided to watch it. And right there and then, it became my favorite movie of all time. More than two decades later, it still is.
I remember the feeling of watching something that profoundly connects with you, something that makes you sit in silence long after the credits have rolled. There is a certain kind of art that finds you at the right moment in your life, gives you a different perspective, and leaves you questioning the things you have always believed about love, life, and the future you once imagined for yourself.
It makes you wonder whether the dreams you carry are still the dreams you want to pursue. It makes you question the choices you have made and, sometimes, even the things you have yet to experience.
Recently, I found myself experiencing that same feeling again. Only this time, it wasn’t a movie. It was a song.
I was scrolling through my TikTok feed when I came across a song titled Mahal ang Magmahal by Esremborak. I stopped. Listened. Paused. Replayed it. And then did it all over again.
There was something about the song that demanded my attention, something that made me want to sit with its words a little longer.
Perhaps it was because publishing a Filipino poetry book had drawn me closer to the language, making me more appreciative of its beauty, its nuances, and its ability to convey emotions that sometimes feel impossible to articulate. There is a particular magic in Filipino, a way of making even the simplest words carry the heaviest truths.
And this song did exactly that.
It was simple, almost playful in the way it delivered its message. Yet beneath its melody was a brutal truth about love in the society we live in today.
Then came those four lines:
“Mahal na ang bigas.
Pati lata ng sardinas.
Kung mamahalin kita ngayon,
Sabay tayong magugutom.”
How do you ever come back from those four brutal lines?
Rice. Sardines. Hunger.
Ordinary things. Everyday necessities. The kind of things we rarely associate with grand declarations of love, the kind of things that would hardly make it into a conventional love song.
And yet, there they were, reminding us that while we can promise someone the stars, we still have to figure out how to put food on the table.
That is what makes the song so painfully brilliant. It takes something as universal as love and places it right in the middle of an ordinary Filipino household, where groceries have to be accounted for, salaries have to stretch until the next payday, and dreams sometimes have to wait because survival cannot.
It is funny until you realize how much truth it carries. And the truth is that falling in love is one thing. Building a life with someone is another.
We can fall in love with a person’s kindness, their laughter, the way they remember the smallest details about us, or how they make an ordinary day feel extraordinary. We can imagine a future filled with shared mornings, late-night conversations, spontaneous dates, and quiet evenings spent doing nothing together.
But eventually, that future has to exist outside our imagination.
There will be bills to pay, responsibilities to carry, emergencies to prepare for, and decisions that will require more than good intentions. There will be days when both people are exhausted, when money is tight, and when love has to find its place among the many other things demanding their attention.
And sometimes, the hardest part is realizing that loving someone does not automatically mean you are ready to build a life with them. But what made this song even more beautiful to me was the selflessness hidden within its message.
It was not simply about someone who could not afford to love. It was about someone who wanted to love but was painfully aware of what that love might cost the other person.
There is a difference between not wanting someone and wanting someone so much that you cannot bear the thought of making their life harder.
Imagine loving someone enough to want to give them everything, yet knowing that you are still trying to put your own life together. You want to take them out, buy them the things they crave, show up when they need you, and make them feel loved in all the little ways that matter. You want to be the person they can depend on, the one who makes life a little lighter.
But what happens when you are barely keeping your own life afloat? What happens when your love is sincere, your intentions are good, and your heart is ready, but your circumstances are not?
Perhaps you begin to question whether keeping someone beside you is the kindest thing you can do for them.
Perhaps you begin to understand that sometimes, letting go is not about loving someone less. It is about recognizing that they deserve a future you cannot yet promise them.
And that is a different kind of heartbreak.
Because it is one thing to leave when love has faded. It is another to walk away while the love is still there, knowing that the person you are letting go of is someone you would have wanted to keep.
It is the kind of love that does not ask, How can I keep you?
Instead, it asks, Can I give you the life you deserve?
I know that sounds painfully idealistic in its own way. After all, love is not a competition in which the person with the bigger paycheck wins. Nor should a person’s worth be measured by how much money they can spend on the person they love.
But there is a distinction between expecting someone to be wealthy and expecting someone to be responsible. Between demanding a luxurious life and wanting a life where both people can breathe without constantly worrying about making ends meet.
The issue has never been about having everything. Sometimes, it is simply about having enough. Enough to eat without worrying about tomorrow. Enough to face an emergency without everything falling apart. Enough to enjoy the occasional date without feeling guilty about the money spent. Enough to build a future together without one person’s dreams becoming another person’s burden.
And when you love someone, you begin to think beyond what you want for yourself. You begin to consider what your presence means in their life, what your decisions might cost them, and whether the future you are asking them to share with you is one they can realistically look forward to.
This is where the song took me back to something I used to believe when I was younger. I used to think that if two people were truly in love, they could weather any storm. That money would never be a problem as long as they had each other. That love, in its purest form, would be enough to carry two people through whatever life threw at them.
And perhaps there is still some truth in that belief. There is something beautiful about two people choosing each other in difficult circumstances. There is beauty in growing together, building from nothing, celebrating small victories, and standing beside one another when the world seems determined to make everything harder.
But that is only one side of the mirror. And when the mirror cracks, you begin to see things differently.
You realize that love does not pay the bills, that sincerity does not guarantee security, and that two people can love each other deeply and still find themselves struggling under the weight of their circumstances.
You learn that hardship does not always bring people closer. Sometimes, it exposes their differences, tests their patience, and forces them to make decisions they never imagined having to make.
And sometimes, love becomes another thing you worry about losing while trying to survive everything else.
I guess that is one of the difficult transitions of growing up. When we are young, we tend to romanticize the idea of enduring everything for love. We imagine ourselves as the couple who will prove everyone wrong, who will choose each other regardless of what the world says, who will eventually look back at all their struggles and realize that everything was worth it.
We believe that if the love is real, the rest will somehow work itself out.
Then life happens.
And somewhere between our first heartbreak, our first major responsibility, and the realization that adulthood is far more expensive than we imagined, we begin to understand that love exists within the realities of the world we live in.
Young people are idealists until the world teaches them to become realists.
But perhaps becoming a realist does not mean becoming cynical about love. Perhaps it simply means learning to see love more honestly.
To understand that choosing someone is not just about how they make you feel today, but also about the kind of life you can build together tomorrow.
To recognize that love is not measured by the grandest promises, but by the willingness to do the ordinary, often unromantic work of making a life together.
And to accept that sometimes, the most loving thing two people can do is acknowledge what they cannot give each other yet. Because love should not have to be a choice between being with someone and being able to live.
We should not have to romanticize suffering to prove that our love is genuine. We should not have to believe that struggling together is automatically more meaningful than building a life where both people can thrive.
There is no shame in starting from nothing. There is no shame in growing together, in having very little while working toward something better. And there is certainly no shame in loving someone while you are still figuring your life out.
But there is also courage in being honest about what you can offer, what you are ready for, and what you need to work on before inviting another person into the life you are building.
Love is not always about having everything figured out. Sometimes, it is about being willing to figure things out together. And sometimes, it is about knowing when you are not ready.
That is what makes Mahal ang Magmahal more than just a catchy song about the rising cost of living. It is a reflection of the complicated world we find ourselves in, where people still want to fall in love, still want to be chosen, and still dream of growing old with someone, but are increasingly aware that wanting a future and being able to afford one are two very different things.
Perhaps that is why the song resonates even with people who are not in the exact situation it describes. Because at some point in our lives, we have all had to confront the distance between what our hearts want and what our circumstances allow.
Perhaps that is also why it reminded me of The Notebook.
Not because the two tell the same story, but because they found me at different points in my life and made me reflect on the same thing: what we believe about love, and what happens when life asks us to reconsider those beliefs.
One reminded me of the beauty of loving someone through the years. The other reminded me that before we can promise someone a lifetime, we must also reckon with the life we are asking them to share.
And perhaps that is why Moulin Rouge! came to mind, too.
Different stories, different worlds, yet all confronting the painful intersection of love and the circumstances that threaten it.
In Moulin Rouge!, there is a line that says, “We can’t afford to love.” In the film, those words carry their own particular heartbreak. But after listening to this song, I found myself thinking about them in a different way.
What does it mean when love becomes something we feel we cannot afford? When the desire to build a life with someone must compete with the need to survive? When two people can be ready to love each other, yet the world they live in makes that love feel like a risk they cannot take?
Perhaps the tragedy is not that love has become less meaningful, but that life has become so difficult that even love must learn to count its costs.
I still believe in love. I believe in the kind that stays, the kind that grows, and the kind that chooses to build something meaningful even when the beginning is difficult.
But I also believe that love deserves more than survival. It deserves the chance to become a home, a partnership, and a future where neither person has to keep apologizing for the things they cannot afford to give.
And if there is one thing these stories have reminded me, it is that perhaps we have been asking the wrong question all along.
We keep asking whether love is enough to survive the world. Maybe the better question is this:
What kind of world have we built when people have to think twice about whether they can afford to love?
*image: airam dato-on / unsplash
