There is a trend on Instagram reels right now where people ask about your “hot take” to strangers in public.

Basically, it is your opinion about something. It could be about relationships or life in general.
I’m still hoping someone asks me one day, but I feel like those things only happen to people in New York.
But what would I say?
I do have one hot take though.
Love is watching the sunset together.

During my vacation last week, my partner and I went camping at Big Fish Bay.
When we arrived there, the weather was not cooperating.
Our campsite was right by the water. It was not so romantic. We were also very hungry.
It was windy. It was raining. We had not eaten anything, and there was my partner, deciding he was still going to cook outside. In the pouring rain.
I kept complaining.

“Well, I didn’t know the weather was going to be like this!”
I probably said different versions of that sentence many times.
He just laughed.

Around 6 p.m., the clouds finally cleared and the sun came out. He was so happy.
“The sunset is coming.”
So, we sat and watched the sunset together.

I looked at him and saw him smiling at the sunset with so much awe. He did not frown. He did not get mad about the rain. He did not even get mad at me for complaining all day.
He simply watched the sunset.
And I watched him.
I thought, maybe this is love.

Maybe love is doing boring things together and still finding something beautiful in them, or even noticing what love is.

It reminded me of the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once. It’s about Evelyn who can travel to a different universe to save the world. In one universe, Evelyn never married her husband, Waymond. But Waymond tells her, “in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.”
I think I’m now learning what he said.

I used to think happiness meant going somewhere new, going to fancy dates, and meeting more people.
But Waymond might be right.

Sometimes, love is simply noticing that it is, just what it is. And that might be happiness.
Slave Lake has taught me that too.

Thank you to the lady in Walmart who went to great lengths to help me find my lost ring.
Thank you to the Wink seller who told me to come back and try their warm siopao (steamed buns) again. I was having a bad day, and that simple interaction stayed with me.

I do not know if I can call every kind gesture “love.”
But maybe they are little pieces of it.

Slave Lake has made me realize that love is not waiting for me in some exciting places.
Sometimes, it is at a rainy campsite in Big Fish Bay, a stranger helping you find a lost ring, or a warm siopao.

And sometimes, it’s finally noticing how happy you already are, right where you are.

Commentary by
Julia Magsombol