I was alone over lunch today and felt differently. Lunch by my lonesome is not supposed to intimidate me since this is something I have done over the years since college. But this was going to be my first lunch alone after so many weeks of always having somebody with me. My three lunch buddies are all unavailable: one is terribly sick, the two others are keeping vigil in the wake of close relatives who died last week.

I sat by the window and was ready for some quiet time. I savored every bite of the usual dimsum I would order, immediately finishing almost half of the tofu I generously drenched with ginger sauce. I wound my way to my favorite part, the chorizo, when, all of a sudden, it just fell off the siopao and rolled a few meters away from me on the floor. I didn't look again since I was kind of feeling bad about it.

On my way back to the office, I joined two ladies in the elevator who were conversing animatedly. The shorter girl, half-smilingly said, she finds it funny sometimes when the best part of our favorite food manages to slip through our fingers, almost all the time on the last bite.

I chuckled and thought, that just happened to me. And what's funnier, I've been thinking about that the whole time I was walking back to my building. But I was more thinking about how it has happened in our lives so often, sometimes even more frequently, than when we eat.

How many times have we come across a person whom we thought was going to be a great love partner when, all of a sudden, something happens and you just part ways. How many of us have lost their boyfriends and girlfriends without the slightest clue after spending years of their our lives with them. How many possible romances have been nipped in the bud just because of rigid and oftentimes impractical standards. How many happy marriages and couples have gone sour and died because love walked out and they didn't sense it.

I now wonder, do we have to lose love and special people to appreciate them?