Notes

I have had my share of loss in life more than some and less than others. I have walked the long road of terminal illness with a loved one ultimately losing them in death. Love is precious and life is fragile. For me lifes experiences revived my awareness that painful feelings of loss are an inevitable part of love. You can’t have one without the other. Grief is a painful process indeed. And it’s not just the losing that hurts. I find it so painful to see someone I love suffer. To see my loved one in pain or in fear just breaks my heart. Sometimes I wish I weren’t so sensitive. I wish I could turn away from those painful feelings and be a bit more distant, a bit more matter of fact. But I realize that would also mean that I was a bit less in touch with love. And that is not something I would wish to give up. To be true to my best self I must embrace the reality that the more I love the more painful the loss. In writing about the death of his dear friend the poet Tennyson expressed this truth in these words: ‘Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all'. I think we instinctively turn Tennyson’s observation into a question: is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved before? We are often undecided about the answer plagued by the question at a very deep level. We ask wouldn’t it be better to protect ourselves from the pain of loss by never loving really loving at all? Much of the isolation we experience in life is related to this fear of loss. If we stay distant, we imagine we protect ourselves. This is very unconscious, of course. We don’t consciously set out to keep a buffer between ourselves and others. We say we want to be close, but we tell ourselves that we can’t be close because we haven’t met the right person or we don’t have the time, the patience, the trust, or the flexibility to risk it. CLOSE YOUR EYES CLEAR YOUR MIND AND REALLY LET GO.. Would you consider the idea that when we are overly picky, judgmental, or cautious that we are unconsciously putting up barriers so that we do not have to be in touch with all the risks involved in really, really loving someone? We tell ourselves that our friend or partner isn’t good enough, trustworthy enough, or safe enough. Perhaps we don’t open ourselves to love as fully as we could because we are so frightened that the relationship won’t work out It is a strategy of safety, but at what cost? How sad it would be to live our lives in a mode of self-protection that costs us some of the most precious experiences of life to love and to be loved. We exchange a life of fulfillment for a life of safety. We exchange one kind of pain for another the pain of love and loss for the pain of loneliness. We must each ask ourselves if that is a trade we are willing to make. Love costs so much because it gives so much. After all if it didn’t give so much we wouldn’t be in such pain when we lose it. For me that is a trade off worth its weight in gold.