"Is it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?" Ecotrain #QOTW

Here is my answer to the question of the week over at #ecotrain posed by @mountainjewels, "Is it better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all?"

Interestingly, (I had to look it up as I had heard it before and never knew who said it) the statement was originally made by Alfred Lord Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred,_Lord_Tennyson.

Photo by burak kostak from Pexels

The experience I grew from the most, that I learned the most from in my life, was the first time I experienced heartbreak. I naively went into it thinking I had been heartbroken before. I realised I had never felt that very real, wrenching pain in my chest before then, I had never felt true heartbreak. I just wanted to take it back, the irreversible decision I made back then, the flight that I didn’t get on.

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However, the period after this was one of the most enlightening of my life, where I discovered meditation properly for the first time and started to do more Yoga than I had ever done before. The stitching myself back together process made me a stronger, better person.

Kintsugi (or Kintsukuroi, which means “golden repair”) is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. https://mymodernmet.com/kintsugi-kintsukuroi/

The pot is even more beautiful for having been broken.

It taught me to let go. You realise at some point that it is not healthy to be carrying around clutter from this other person. Clutter in the form of physical items that my ex had given me. Or, the cherished hope that somehow circumstances would bring us back together, even though I knew that I had made the right decision in the first place.

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To shun love because it is painful is surely a folly. We must learn to deal with the pains of heartbreak. Heartbreak is a part of what it means to be human, just as much as being capable of love is. Most of us cannot help but love, and if you repress this aspect of yourself because you are scared of being hurt, it can only cause pain and suffering. Suffering is also by the way, an unavoidable part of life. The more and more you accept this seemingly obvious fact, the less suffering will affect you.

So yes. I believe it is better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all. We have to take the bitter with the sweet, the joy with the sadness. Heartbreak makes love all the more real, all the more worth of cherishing as we know how fleeting it can be.

Warm thanks and greetings to all those at ecotrain, and to anyone else who made it to the bottom of my post. I look forward to reading all the other answers to this great question😀☮

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