The Seduction of the Unattainable

Way back in college, I had this quiet hobby of slipping into book sales. Not the big ones—just the messy, dusty tables tucked inside Centermall, one of Baguio’s oldest malls. The kind of place where the lights flicker and the scent of rust and forgotten pages lingers longer than the shoppers.

It wasn’t about finding something specific. It was the hunt. The maybe.

One afternoon, I came across a book with no title on the spine. The cover was soft, torn in the corners, like it had been through several hands that never loved it properly. Inside, on the first page, someone had scribbled in pencil: “Don’t finish this unless you’re ready to lose something.”

I didn’t buy it.

I kept turning the thought over in my head though, for years.
I don’t even remember the plot. Just the feeling it gave me: like someone had whispered a secret then vanished before I could respond.

We never really crave the thing, do we?
We crave the tension before the having.
The idea of it.
The fiction we write around the fragments.

Desire isn’t always about acquisition—it’s about distance.
We assign magic to what’s just beyond our reach.
Because what’s close asks things of us.
But what’s far? What’s unattainable? It lets us project, idealize, obsess—without consequence.

That book? I think I was scared of what I might lose if I finished it.

I still think about it.
Still wonder what would’ve happened if I bought it, read it, maybe ruined the fantasy.

But maybe that’s the point.

Some things are more seductive when they remain incomplete.

We don’t fall in love with the unattainable.
We fall in love with who we get to be in the space between.

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