Sempitnya Waktu Besarnya Cinta

"Begitu sempitnya waktu, begitu besarnya cinta" ("So little time, so much love") is, as most Indonesians might know, the tagline of the romantic movie Ungu Violet.

The poetic line caught my attention at the time of release and stayed in my mind, even though I never checked out the movie. Now that I've read the synopsis and reviews, the story looked pretty cliched -- very reminiscent of that famous Korean music video "Because I Am A Woman", though possibly with more complex background story. But anyway, I shouldn't comment further seeing as you may know better than me, who haven't watched.

The line just popped into my mind followed by a feeling of belated comprehension ("Ohhh, so that's what it means..") because my life right now is a pile of things I'd love to do but have not done, songs I'd love to learn but have not properly listened to, shows and recordings I'd love to watch but have not gotten around to... and time is never enough.

I thought I was quite an accepting person even in situations when I shouldn't, but for this timing issue I seem to be perpetually dissatisfied, as evidenced by my extremely irregular, lower bound-pushing sleeping hours. Ah.

By the way the above-mentioned belated comprehension may be incorrect after all, because after checking out the (spoiler-free) movie plot, I'm guessing that the line actually refers to some looming character death. Time indeed flows in one direction (or did I just betray my modern physics lecturer? This seems to warrant another blog post by itself) but "little time" in the movie context feels "forward" while my context feels "sideways".. if that makes sense (think duration vs. bandwidth?).

But, that would actually fit just right with the literal meaning: "How narrow time is, how big love is". Ahh, the connotations we lost in translation..