“‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson
This quote is very well known. It may be presented to those who have recently lost a loved one either through distance, a break-up, or death to provide some sort of comfort that in the end, it will have made them a better person for going through the experience at all, no matter how much it hurts now.
It’s also a common question asked on surveys and questionnaires passed around the Internet via e-mail, forums, social networking websites – which would you rather? Most people I know choose the former. They understand the absolute joy that love can bring to their lives even when they’ve experienced the almost inconsolable feeling of loss when it’s gone.
However, not everyone feels love. I don’t think it’s because they just can’t, but because they won’t let themselves. To feel love for or from somebody else, you have to love yourself and it can be very difficult to do that. Even if one reaches the point of loving themselves, they may have built up such a strong wall that prevents anyone from getting in, to protect their efforts of finally building themselves up for the first time, or even for the hundredth time.
Then there are those who allow themselves to feel love so massively that it’s all-consuming and once it’s gone, it takes almost everything they are with it. They feel there’s no other love out there capable of matching up to what they just lost. Those are the ones who may be better off having never loved at all, because they let it consume and destroy them and that, is a very sad situation.
Love is a very strong emotion. It has to be. Just as hate is. They’re on the same end of the spectrum, in my opinion. People often place love & hate opposite each other, but they’re both very strong emotions and often you need to have felt one to know how to feel the other. You need to care to feel either. If an emotion is strong enough, some people will take that strength and put it towards themselves, feeding the betterment of who they are and adding it to their arsenal of life experience. Others, will do the opposite and let it control them and break them down a little, some, significantly or completely. Sometimes you just never know what will end up happening with somebody else, or even yourself.
With as much pain as I know loving others puts people through, and even the pain I’ve experienced, I feel I’m strong enough to continue “putting myself through it”. I love myself enough to know that loving others – regardless of the outcome – will not break me. It has, and will cause cracks, but never enough to crumble who I am. I just wish all others were able to do so as well…
