Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? | Ecotrain Question of the Week

in #ecotrain6 years ago (edited)

This week the #Ecotrain Question of the Week (QOTW) was created by yours truly!

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


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Zinnia on the homestead


Love Lessons


For the last @Tribesteemup Biweekly Question, What does it mean to be human?, I dug in a little bit about our experiences in Earth School, the fact that we're all here experiencing life in these bodies and within the context of relationships through space and time. Love is one of the most powerful of teachers, and through this, we are given opportunities to grow, to change & to be changed, seemingly by forces from without and of course within.

We commonly employ phrases like fall in love, head over heels in love, being taken with x, and other things that let us know that love is a deeply involved process that even can make us crazy sometimes. It's important to also add here that love as a long term thing can be a choice! We can choose to cultivate ardor or connection with someone(thing) through spending time with it or focusing on the positive attributes about it. But yet, the romantic or magnetic aspect that we refer to as love is often a "hit ya up side the head" kind of thing, at least in the beginning.

So if it leaves, are we still thankful we experienced it?

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Zinnias <3

Here are a few reasons that I'm thankful for the process of loving, even if it is ultimately lost.

Love Teaches Us


Love is one of the most powerful of teachers. Much is written about love, but the experience of it moving through us has perhaps the greatest capacity to transform us in ways that other factors of our lives simply cannot.

Love is the great mover.

It moves mountains, sends people on quests with indescribable longings, across the world for the object of love or to the same part of town night after night... Love sets us in motion and when we are without it, we're always searching and moving on the lookout to connect with it.

As Rumi says in Desire and the Importance of Failing:

A thirsty man calls out, ‘Delicious water,
where are you?’ while the water moans,
‘Where is the water drinker?’

The thirst in our souls is the attraction
put out by the Water itself.

We belong to It,
and It to us.

God’s wisdom made us lovers of one another.
In fact, all the particles of the world
are in love and looking for lovers.

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Queen Anne's Lace & Spider's Web

We Cannot Possess What We Love

This is a great lesson of love. Because love feels so amazing and is such a heightened experience, we initially want to grasp it, to box it in, to hold onto it, not realizing that it is a force moving through us. Love is a different animal than the word marriage or "long term relationship". While love can exist within these structures, they're not one and the same. The question, is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, comes forth from this desire to hold onto love and from the acknowledgement of pain from loving and losing. We want love to stick around and we want love to stay. We desire that consistency from love, but is that the nature of love?

And what about reciprocity? What if you love something that doesn't love you back?

I learned a great thing in a scene at the end of the movie Adaptation with Nicolas Cage:

Charlie Kaufman: There was this time in high school. I was watching you out the library window. You were talking to Sarah Marsh.
Donald Kaufman: Oh, God. I was so in love with her.
Charlie Kaufman: I know. And you were flirting with her. And she was being really sweet to you.
Donald Kaufman: I remember that.
Charlie Kaufman: Then, when you walked away, she started making fun of you with Kim Canetti. And it was like they were laughing at me. You didn't know at all. You seemed so happy.
Donald Kaufman: I knew. I heard them.
Charlie Kaufman: How come you looked so happy?
Donald Kaufman: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
Charlie Kaufman: But she thought you were pathetic.
Donald Kaufman: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.

That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.

Having experienced unreciprocated love myself, this taught me something. That even if the person never acknowledges or reciprocates your love, that your loving them is an experience that you're having. Own that. If love becomes recognizable or your lover leaves, realize that the love worked on you, taught you, transformed you in some way. Be grateful for the feeling of it moving through you, don't grasp it or expect something from it. Love is sufficient unto itself.

In the end, love points us toward love


When we experience loss in the outer realm it reminds us that we contain the source of love within ourselves as well.

Pain comes from the feeling of separation or loss from something that can be taken from us. As we discussed above, we cannot control the object of our love, to do so would kill love itself and it would turn more into a gross twisted form of dependency. If love moves on or the person does not reciprocate our love, we remember that:

“Listen, O drop, give yourself up without regret,
and in exchange gain the Ocean.
Listen, O drop, bestow upon yourself this honor,
and in the arms of the Sea be secure.
Who indeed should be so fortunate?
An Ocean wooing a drop!
In God's name, in God's name, sell and buy at once!
Give a drop, and take this Sea full of pearls.”

Rumi


You are not a drop within an ocean,
you are an entire ocean within a drop.
-Rumi


Love is within and while it is so fun to play in the outer realm of romance and love connections with others, we remember that we cannot control it, that we are likely richer and full of more character for loving others fully, that we likely learned something of value and that, in the end, we have the source of love within ourselves too. We aren't dependent on our outer environment.

In the end, I wholeheartedly think it is better to have loved and lost than to never love at all.

I am better for my experiences of love, even the heartbreaks.

What do you think? Feel free to answer this QOTW in the comments or write a post of your own and use #ecotrain as your first tag!!

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For sure, it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved. I think back to my earlier romantic loves and remember the pain of separation. There were a few of those I loved and wondered if they would ever appear in my life again. They seem to have made an appearance and an impact, then they are gone and I found I had grown from that experience and moved on in my life so that if they did come into my life again they would never have the impact on me as it did in my earlier years. The heartbreaks seem to have made for some pretty good songstoo! I remembering when I first met my husband and our eyes met. It was love at first site! We became best friends and built a life together which we both still enjoy. It was that friendship that kept us together after the honeymoon stage of love. That brings me to the point of different types of love. The love for your friends or a mothers love for her child. Being a mother to me that is one of the greater loves and totally changed my being. There is also the more spiritual love. Then there is the Metta, or loving kindness, often used in meditation to develop compasion for others. What about the opposite of love? Hatred? Greed, Hatred and Delusion are the three greatest things that will lead you down the wrong path of sin and corruption. Knowing the power of love, which brings goodness and peace, I would say let there be more love, however much love there could possibly be. That is the world I want to live in.

Oh I had love at first sight with my husband too! Isn't that amazing!!! And like you, the friendship that follows is extraordinary and deep. Oh, and metta!! Yes!! I love this. You should write a post on it @porters!!!

Okay @naturalmedicine. I'll take what I put in herre and expand on it.

"We became best friends and built a life together which we both still enjoy" - This is SUCH an important aspect of lasting love. The shine gets less shiny and the lasting bond is what keeps folks together. Happy to hear you have found deep connection. Yes, write that post! There's a lot you're bringing up here and it'd be great to see it fleshed out.

Be grateful for the feeling of it moving through you, don't grasp it or expect something from it. Love is sufficient unto itself.

Yes, yes, yes. Beautiful. God love is grand!!! Even if it hurts. And we are better for the loving, always.

Loving never takes anything from us, we may be drained by other factors, but I feel that love is ALWAYS and regenerative force.

I love Rumi, I soooooo love Rumi.....
Your Zinnias are beautiful and it shows that you care about them very much.
Figuring out that love is not about possession is one of the big lessons we have to learn and I am happy that you have figured it out. There is a really nice quote from Osho that I am very fond of:

“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up.
Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love.
So if you love a flower, let it be.
Love is not about possession.
Love is about appreciation.”
OSHO

Thank you for such a lovely read over my morning coffee, it is exceptional and I enjoyed it very much 💚

Rumi seems to be appropriate MOST of the time. Timeless and beautiful indeed.

Thanks for the quote, a great reminder that the process is about appreciating and yet not grasping the thing you love. Happy you enjoyed it <3

Love has so much to teach us and it is such a powerful force, it is so important to accept the love we feel and the love that is directed at us, I love that quote from the movie you have here it is so true, love is experienced in so many different ways, it is so hard to define. I think all of us together came close but there is so much more to be said as it is endless ad expansive and so much for us to really grasp, that is why acceptance is so important xx

We can point at what we think Love is, but I feel that it's actually impossible to pin down. It has an energy all unto itself. Letting it flow is my favorite way to love. When there's a 2 way opening, it seems to keep growing!I consider it one of the few infinite resources on this Earth.

very well said xxx

@moutainjewel, i think you raised a very important issue in your post. "You are what you love, not what loves you." and i think if people understand this, they will learn to love others even more better . I think most often we loss in love because we want to posses the other partners love .

"we lose in love because we want to posses the other partners love" i agree. Our Love cannot be taken from us, it is ours to give. It is a profound and powerful choice to choose to love something.

I truly and deeply loved reading every word of this.

You nailed something here that I skipped on purpose when exploring this topic. When love is not reciprocated by someone who is supposed to love you (family) ...

You are what you love, not what loves you.

I have suffered so deeply for failure to know this deep inside. It is such a simple thing yet so powerful. ♥

This truth is simple, powerful yet difficult to accept at times. It can be one of the most difficult aspects of love when it's not reciprocated. Love is not lesser if it's not flowing both ways. This is indeed a deep and profound lesson.

Great post - I agree. Love is what its all about. And

you are what you love

Love is part of finding out what (who) you are.

I agree, we are formed through love and therefore understand the world more completely through loving.

"Because love feels so amazing and is such a heightened experience, we initially want to grasp it, to box it in, to hold onto it, not realizing that it is a force moving through us." This is such an important point. Love so easily gets confused with feelings of possession. Great post! ❤❤❤

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