Love and Loss

If you were bummed-out by yesterday's blog entry, you should be happy to know the today's entry contains a modicum of angst instead of the heavy-duty concentrated angst I put out yesterday. The purpose of this blog is to give me an outlet to deal with these feelings before they completely eat away at me. Besides, if you think yesterday's blog was dark, you should try reading some of the fiction I've been trying to produce.

Today's philosophical discourse concerns one of Lord Tennyson's most famous quotes, “'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.”

I envy not in any moods

The captive void of noble rage,

The linnet born within the cage,

That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes

His license in the field of time,

Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,

To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,

The heart that never plighted troth

But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;

Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it, when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all. 

"In Memoriam A.H.H" Canto XXVII

by Lord Tennyson

Most often this stanza is applied to failed romantic relationships, but what Tennyson is really talking about is grief. The point Tennyson makes is that to love someone is what separates us from beasts and is what makes us human. The heart that stays hidden and protected from the possible pains of the world will never know the joy and pleasure of truly loving someone, and no better that any beast in the wood or field, without conscience.

I don't completely agree with what Tennyson is trying to say, but I do agree that the pain, loss, and grief are worth the joy and pleasure of loving someone. The reality of our psyches is that they are incomplete until we open ourselves to allow someone in. My time with Kathy is the only time I have felt whole and complete. Which is why I feel the way I do now. My psyche, made whole and completed by the love I shared with Kathy is now broken and fractured.

If I had a chance to do it all over again, I could never give up beauty of what we had together, just to avoid the pain and loss I suffer with today.