Don't Let The Fear of Loss Steal The Beautiful Moments of Love

 

Loving someone is the bravest thing we can ever do as individuals, because when we choose to love we are taking a chance at loss. A risk that beyond all things is actually worth it.

You see, love and loss are an inevitable pair, and because the heart is a fragile thing we sometimes forfeit the chance to love out of the fear of loss. "What good is it to have a thing that makes you feel so good if you are only going to lose it," we say. Well, guess what: no one really needs to cry over spilled milk if you think about it, it's already spilled and crying won't unspill it; rather it just reminds you of the tragic experience over and over again. In other words, you can't go around worrying all your life about losing someone because you are going to lose them eventually. For some in a year and for others in a hundred. Even if not by choice or chance, by such ill fate as death. But that's the thing, whether by choice or ill fate it was always going to be. That's why trying to avoid it isn't the best thing we can do; ensuring we enjoy it is.

Simple.

No matter how much I dislike this fact, there's always going to be that spouse who leaves his or her partner. That child who disappoints his parent. That sibling who betrays his family. That hearthrob who leaves you heartbroken. That person whose passing will shatter you into a blistered million pieces. We can't completely eradicate or avoid these things. We can't eviscerate its possibility, but we can look on the bright side and enjoy the great moments that comes with them in spite of how minute they might be. Because it's not the end that matters, it's the moments that make up the journey.

Life in itself has no meaning without death, otherwise it would just be a continuum that outlasts its purpose. The reason why time exists is to give each moment purpose, and with each moment we discover a bit of ourselves and the pieces that make up the masterpiece we were designed to be. And it's exactly how love works too. The love between a man and his wife, between siblings, friends and even mere strangers. It's meant to change us, to shapen us to a version we always assumed was buried in the labyrinth of our personhood. Love is meant to liberate regardless of how it ends. As long as it was real, it leaves a score on your heart so true and so strong it brings out a better part of yourself.

Personally, I've never been open to this because I was scared of loss. I always wanted to be in control. Losing my mom at a young age haunted me and so I chose never to hold something so dear to my heart that could be ripped out at any minute. The only ones I gave myself to love without restraint were my family. Every other person was just a temporary character in a scene that I assumed was designed to end soon. And without meaning to I made them suffer for it without knowing that in the long run it was who would be doing the actual suffering. So I never really enjoyed moments I should have with them, I simply had a taste with a pinch of salt scared that it might end up being a trap, but I was wrong. It's taken almost three decades but I've realised that I was wrong. No one can ever be in total control. We all are simply passengers in a crashing vessel. And in a crashing vessel there is no wisdom in pondering if it's going to be grounded or not, but there's so much in making each second count. 

It takes only a moment to change a life, and there are countless moments that offer such opportunity in a lifetime. However, unless the heart is open to such you would never see it even if it were standing right in front of you. And nothing keeps the heart more open than the willingness to love, to know, to understand, to make a part of one's self something you know could vanish the next minute. As such, there were things I missed, experiences I lacked, possibilities I botched. There's a part of me that remains unalive because I chose not to take a chance, because I was quick to escape the "trap" of endearment. But there's no trap in endearment, just liberation.

In fact as Christians I can tell you that what makes God God is not the ability to know all things or to be all-powerful, it's the ability to love unconditionally and beyond all barriers because that's something everything anti-God can never be; and we know we have become just like Him when we have learned to hone this ability. That's how important being able to love really is.

Furthermore, you never know how much your heart can hold until you love. The heart is like a dark tunnel that seems to end at the very next step, but with love light shines brightly at the end giving room to a way that never seemed to exist and the same tunnel becomes an endless path of possibilities. So much possibilities that the same heart can keep a thing alive within itself that might have been dead for years. How? Because love gives life even to things that may be dead, and these things stay alive even if not terrestrially but in the very created reality in which its source operates.

So do choose to love because there's a lot about you to discover, and loving sometimes is the only way of breaking the ice around that discovery.

I understand that loss is not just a possibility but an eventuality which makes it a much fearsome reason not to want to give your heart away, but letting yourself do that would be like choosing not to wake up because statistically someone that isn't you somewhere in the world has to die each day same way someone is born each day to even the world's balance of things. The fact that it wasn't you who died but someone else doesn't make it the worst thing in the world. The world is already almost bad as it is and only little things that sprout light gives us a fighting chance at making it a haven for us and the ones we care about. Things like love, empathy, goodness. And expressing these daily is how we achieve that.

Lastly, don't let anyone gaslight you. You don't need a special day to show these acts of love. That's a social construct; people's opinions. In reality every day should be an excuse to love someone. The call to love isn't just a duty, it's the very core of our humanity.  It's what makes us special. What makes us human and not just beings. Not the days nor the events but the capability to love richly. So don't be scared, choose to love.

I'll end with this simple saying I like to tell myself sonetimes: Life is a party, the world is the dance floor,  and we are either dancing or not. Dancing is meant to be an act of joy, and nothing breeds joy better than love. Not just within you but in everyone else touched by it.