Kilig!!!

How do you find an English term for kilig? What is kilig but that feeling that you’re about to faint anticipating the first kiss of Leah and Clark (played by Nadine Lustre and James Reid, respectively), the main characters of the teleserye On the Wings of Love (OTWOL). Kilig is that moment when Clark stares at Lea so knowingly, and Lea hesitates. I’m telling you, that teleserye is keeping me up past my bedtime. I’m usually asleep before 9 p.m., but I’m hooked! What onscreen chemistry James and Nadine have, but I believe it’s also because of the material. It tells about the struggle of OFWs, and about finding love and hope in the face of adversity. That is kilig, and we’re just suckers for a good love story.

On Twitter, someone was thankful about OTWOL because she has not been kilig for quite some time now. My friend, who is in her 30s, has a scrapbook of the JaDine love team sticking out of her bag like a schoolgirl. We couldn’t stop talking about OTWOL even at the corridors of ABS-CBN. We’re all turning giddy, us middle-aged women, some even older and including some men!

Over the weekend, we had a kilig overload at the Smart Araneta Coliseum when the biggest love teams of the Kapamilya network joined the It’s Showtime Kapamilya Day.

Admit it: It’s a good feeling to be kilig and it makes you feel ridiculous sometimes, but that’s the secret of OTWOL. It’s light and bubbly, and maybe even shallow compared to other content that we watch on television, but it leaves a lingering happy feeling that we all love.

But aside from the teleserye OTWOL, I get kilig over many other things. I get kilig over good food and beautiful music, as well as passionate people and ideas.

For example, I was kilig and wide-eyed while listening intently to every word of Wattpad co-founder Allen Lau. He was one of the speakers at the ABS-CBN Digital Summit together with Chee Meng Tan of Spotify and Victoria Ho of Mashable. He was not James portraying Clark, but a 47-year-old lanky nerd who happened to be very passionate about the mobile device and his love for reading. Before the advent of the smartphone, he made programs for the four-liner Nokia. It took five years of patience and stubborn perseverance (the only profit they made in the beginning was enough to buy a cup of coffee). Allen could and maybe should have given up, but he was relentless. I became a fan instantly.

Kilig is often associated with high school crushes, but it can also be about our deepest passions and interests that make us jump for joy or let out a shrill. I get easily excited that I might be accused of using the kilig word loosely — admittedly, I am one person that is “mababaw ang kaligayahan.”

Ah, the simple joys of life! We should allow ourselves to feel kilig every once in a while. I think we need it. In the face of all the skepticism that surrounds us, it’s nice to simply be happy and to allow ourselves to be giddy.