Comment on Love Lost

 

To pine for a recent former lover, the sadness all prevailing, one’s desire to even live, one’s most incredible goals and aspirations fall by the wayside because that Love that once seemingly existed has now ended – and without this Love, one deeply feels life is not worth living.

It has been said that it is a dangerous act indeed to wallow in this lost Love, and if you have read Goethe’s novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther”, know that the young man merely wanted to fit in, stumbled into Love and lost, thus, in the end committing suicide. However, one can forgive young Werther as a boy, naïve, and a true idealist.

But for one to really Love a new woman with such passion as an older man reveals that at least the “capacity” to love, so intense and sublime, brings hope that it is even possible for someone who has experienced life on so many levels, can fall so totally in Love with a woman.

Sadness, grief, and sorrow are emotions connected with a significant loss.

Reflecting, however, does not one’s experience, age, and inevitable cynicism (a better word would be jaded) excuse him from this terrible pain?

These passionate emotions are not only intended for the young because one can continue to feel the pain of lost love, whether 13 or 60. There are no ‘statutes of limitations’ on romantic and passionate lover. But it feels as though the older lover will feel the pain more powerfully because of their experience in life. Perhaps because they realize life is too short and the experience may never come again.

What is so difficult is to rationalize in one’s head with the emotions of one’s heart. We “know” wallowing in, and feeling this sadness, is, to some extent, absurd, but the heart pays no attention and continues pouring forth the sadness and Love – the feelings of loss.

Love is a mystery without any clear-cut answers…

Rainer Maria Rilke
For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

Francois de la Rochefoucauld
When we are in Love, we often doubt that which we most believe.

When wanting to withdraw from life because of some pain or sadness, I often remember a line from a poem by Emily Bronte:

“No coward’s soul is mine.”