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love relationships

Why Letting Go Is One of the Most Catastrophic Things That Could Happen to You

Some people talk about letting go as though it were a very easy thing to do.

People talk as though letting go is only about letting the bad things go and moving happily on from there. But the truth is that when you let go, you must also accept losing all the good things you’ve been holding on to.

To let go, you must separate yourself from something that has been a very important part of you.

 Many times, it means a catastrophic shattering of your connection to almost everything it has touched in your life.

When you let go, you suffer a kind of fall that makes you not only sad but very much afraid. It’s a feeling of being lost, of suffocating in darkness, of being so empty you feel like you don’t know yourself anymore.

And that is why it’s called a broken heart.

Because something has broken within you, in the very core of who you are. In a way, you let go of yourself. You risk losing who you’ve been so you can find yourself again. You risk being shattered so you can be healed, so you can be whole again.

Not in the way you were before, but into another kind of person, a new person. A person with scars and tears, and yes, a person with new-found strength and wisdom, too.

As you let go of everything, good and bad, you become open to starting anew. You open yourself into receiving what you’ve always needed and you grow.

Gradually, you pick up the new pieces of your life as you gain a new heart and a new pair of eyes. Eyes that can finally see all the things you failed to see. Eyes that can dream again and hope again. It may not be easy, but you begin and you trust that if you can endure being broken, you’d eventually find your way to peace.

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relationships

The Biggest Regret You Could Ever Have

I think our biggest regret in life later on, especially at the end, is that we haven’t loved enough.

At the end of it all, these are just some of the questions we may have in mind:

  • Why had I ever been so defensive?
  • Why did I try to justify myself too much?
  • Why didn’t I give the little that were asked of me?
  • Why had I not been more thoughtful?
  • Why had I not been a little more patient?
  • Why had I not listened more?
  • Why had I not spent more time with the ones I loved?

Time passes by so quickly, and quite often, we take for granted the opportunities we have to show how much we care. Sometimes, we focus so much on how much we’ve been offended or hurt that we forget how our loved ones feel.

It doesn’t take so much to let our loved ones know how much they matter to us. Many times, all it takes is just a little sacrifice on our part?—?our willingness to take the blame, our gratitude for their presence in our lives, an apology whenever we hurt their feelings.

Instead of waiting at the end of our lives, why don’t we decide to take little steps that can expand the way we love today?

Today, while it’s not yet too late why not say?—

  • I will be less defensive.
  • I will try not to justify myself too much.
  • I will decide to give the little things that are being asked of me.
  • I will be more thoughtful.
  • I will be more patient.
  • I will listen more.
  • I will spend more time with the ones I love.

I will not delay the kindness that I could show. I will not hold back the love that I could give today.

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relationships

If Love Is a Decision, Should We Forget About Our Feelings?

Is love a promise we can truly make?

I think every person who has ever loved has had a certain vision of love he or she could always go back to in times of darkness. It is this vision that has first shown us our first glimpse of happiness. It is this vision that enabled us to know what a life of meaning could be, what a life of love is worth.

Without this vision, we remain trapped within ourselves. We remain selfish. And our eyes that were meant to look at someone else, to appreciate someone else’s beauty are sorely misused into trying to look at our own countenance. How could we even look naturally that way? Without using a mirror, we could never even properly see ourselves.

We were meant to be seen by someone else as we were meant to see another soul. We were meant to love another as we were meant to be loved.

Seeing this vision, we finally realize the meaning of our whole existence. We find the very purpose of our lives. And somewhere within that first glimpse of heaven, we know for the first time the value of eternity. For what is time without love? And what is love if it not be eternal?

Love alone redeems us. It is love alone that shows us who really are.

“Love is trembling happiness.” — Kahlil Gibran

The Decision to Love

From our initial encounter with love, we are changed. In a way, we are also set free. Free to walk away and never be vulnerable enough to let someone in. Free to let go of all that would ever be required from us by love. At the same time, we are also free to decide to nurture the love we have found. We are free to stay and to give everything we’ve ever got for the priceless treasure we have just found.

“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”? Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

Many people run away because they are afraid of committing themselves to love. They don’t want to make a vow because they think that love should never be an obligation to fulfill.

Love, according to many, is all about that initial bliss. And so we love only until we feel warm and comfortable inside. We love only when we never experience pain.

When dryness comes, as it always does, we think we have lost love. And maybe we have. We have lost it because we did not decide to keep it. It has abandoned us because we have abandoned it first.

Love is not an object we can obtain by trading an ephemeral good we care nothing about. Love is a flame that must be kept burning by those who decide to give it their full devotion and courage.

Love Is Not Slavery

Be that as it may, love is not a mere chain that enslaves us. We are not some kind of machine that is programmed to do this and that without considering the deepest desires of our hearts.

Love requires commitment, but love never forces itself upon any person.

To say that we can love without our hearts is to say that we can breathe without our lungs.

Consider choosing a husband and taking care of one’s marriage. Certainly, there will be ups and downs. One will not always feel happy. But one also does not merely pick a random person from the crowd and then decide to marry him. One chooses using very important considerations. We decide because we see something good and beautiful and true that we want to keep forever even when there will be times of trial and suffering ahead.

Consider also the love of a mother for her child. Certainly, she will not always experience comfort and satisfaction. A baby even cries through the night and disturbs the sleep of the mother. But a mother loves the child, a love that is more than a decision to care for her child. It is indeed more than fleeting feelings and comforts. But present indeed is that fondness and delight in her child that never vanishes and is beyond all suffering and pain.

The Mystery of Love

The great mystery of love is that it is beyond our joys and our sorrows. It is by love that we find our greatest happiness, but it is also by love that we feel our deepest grief.

Love is a very complicated thing. When you first love, you love all the beautiful things, all the good things that touch your heart and make you happier than you’ve ever been. Love changes you. Love opens up for you new doors and new worlds that give a fresh and deeper meaning to your life.

But when you continue in love, you know that those things are not everything. You learn that love is also painful, that love consumes you and demands every unimaginable sacrifice from you.

Love is joy and sorrow, love is bliss and pain, love is receiving, love is giving, love is holding on and love is letting go.

Love leads us into paths we would never have followed on our own — paths that urge us to be brave, to be unselfish, to go on loving, even if receive nothing back.

Love is a complicated thing. We can try with all our might to define it, to claim it, to grasp it, but in the end, it is love that defines us, that claims us and that grasps us. We become immersed in love and we will never be the same again.

Final Thoughts

Love isn’t always about feeling good. Many times, we need to endure times of suffering and emptiness, times of pain and darkness. Days can pass by without thrill or pleasure. And we go on only because we believe we cannot let momentary trials take away the best thing we have ever found.

Yet though this is so, we also need days that can remind us of the light that first captivated us. We need to be reminded of those times when we first gazed upon the beautiful and the true.

In order to carry on, we need to remember why we have ever loved at all.

Love is more than a feeling. But love is also more than making a decision and a commitment.

Let us never reduce love into a mere addiction where we selfishly desire only feelings of elation even to the detriment of the person loved.

But let us never reduce love into a kind of slavery either where we can boastfully say to the other that we have decided to commit like machines without a human heart.

Love, in the end, is what helps us discover what it means to be truly human.

Mend My Broken Heart

Free for a limited time — Download at Amazon

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relationships

Can Friends Also Break Your Heart?

We often refer to heartbreaks as those belonging only to romantic relationships.  What’s often left out is that we also hurt from other relationships in our lives, and that includes the friendships we have.  Was it not painful when a friend has suddenly ignored you or forgotten you?  Wasn’t it just as painful to be betrayed by your best friend?

Sometimes, it’s even harder to heal from said heartbreaks.  Why?  Because when you make friends, you don’t prepare yourself for a breakup.  You trust your friends.  You don’t expect them to suddenly shatter the faith you have in them.

I wrote a comprehensive piece about this topic which I would like to share with you today:

The Ultimate Guide When a Friend Breaks Your Heart:  What Happens When a Friendship Dies? (Continue Reading)

 

Categories
relationships

The Ultimate Guide When a Friend Breaks Your Heart

The Ultimate Guide When a Friend Breaks Your Heart
Photo by Yuri Levin on Unsplash

What is a friend?

“The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’” — C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“In this kind of love… ‘Do you love me?’ means ‘Do you see the same truth?’” — C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

How do we lose our friends?

1. The problem of distance

“Go often to the house of thy friend; for weeds soon choke up the unused path.” — Scandinavian Mythology

2. The problem of outgrowing one another

“Friends are people who go on conspiratorial shopping sprees together, diving in and out of shops totally beyond their price range, and ending up eating oozing cream cakes with only just enough money to get home.” — Pam Brown

3. The problem of misunderstanding

“One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.” — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

4. The problem of death

“We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.” — Joseph Roux

5. The problem of betrayal

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.”- William Blake

The hour of loss

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”? Kahlil Gibran

I think friends are like stars

What do you do when you lose a friend?

1. Accept the loss

“For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.”? Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

2. Forgive

“When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive” — Alan Paton

3. Cherish the good

4. Cry

“The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places.” — Ernest Hemmingway

5. Get in touch with other friends

6. Have patience; it takes time to heal

7. Make new friends

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” — Anaïs Nin

Other things that could help

1. Keep a journal

2. Write a poem

3. Stay away from social media

4. Be ready when meeting mutual friends

5. Find a new hobby

6. Keep yourself busy with volunteer work

7. Improve your self-esteem

8. Choose new friends wisely

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.” ? Anais Nin

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” — Jane Austen

Has your friendship really died?

1. Think about what went wrong

2. Reach out

3. Wait

4. Decide to let it go

Final thoughts

“For what purpose, then, do I make a man my friend? In order to have someone for whom I may die, whom I may follow into exile, against whose death I may stake my own life, and pay the pledge, too.” — Seneca