'"Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" - Tennyson.
My expierence is so limited and that makes it hard for me to say. Which my friends - is why I am interested to know what you think, and maybe even why you think it - if you might be so brave. And yes - its a silly blog - so you may not want to bare your soul - but something to think about anyway.
The conculsion I think I came to was this:
I hate the image of the man in his cabin alone, letting the world pass him by. Granted, he might be happy, in the sense that he has found contentment within himself and his surroudings. But I think love, even platonic love, takes us outside of ourselves. And yes it hurts, and I don't even begin to know what that means. Yet even when it hurts the most, I get this feeling that I just wouldn't be whole without it.
There you go, with my inadequate thoughts now on screen, you can veeery easily outdo me...come on!
6 comments:
you're right. and i love the way you put it.
although love can hurt like nothing else, the places that love and even infatuation/interest can take you to are such brilliant ones. they are places that are unmatched by any other.
i wish i really knew of love.
what am i saying?
you two freaking kill me. I'm not even going to try to compare. except who's kidding who i live in constant comparison to souls like yours. I think you're both right. *(i just spent 20minutes typing out a huuuge comment that related nothing to the topic at hand. great bon)* Like i said, after you two i don't think there's anymore articulance or eloquence to be had on the topic. Honestly, I tried two more times just now to write something. I got nothing. thanks for the topic though sharelle.
thanks guys. i really didnt think anyone would post at all. but i can count on you guys...love that.
Thought: The man in the cabin, alone and content does he find himself there, in those surroundings because he HAS loved and lost. Could it be that he knows full well the true depth of Tenneyson's verse? Could it be that the loss of a dear love is on his mind everyday and his current state of living is merely a reaction to the longing inside. However, his current surroundings provide him a place where HE can find peace, he CAN find clarity, he CAN find love, he can find the "love" that he is looking for... but just in a different way...not platonic, human love. But rather, love of nature, of beauty, or of taking care of what you have been given, a love for life lived...a love that is on a different level and not the same as what he lost. Can this type of love be just as strong, just as vivid, just as exhilerating and just as complete. He IS living and HE is complete...in a sense.
I am making a lot of speculations about your "cabin man". You know, the Greeks had seven different words for "love". I wish that we could further define our English word in this way. Love means many different things, at many different times, in many different scenarios. It is an emotion, which means it lends itself to all kinds of interpretation. Emotions can be varying and fleeting. Should we put so much trust in them? I'm not so sure that we should. Is one love more complete than another? I think it is personal..what is good enough for one person, maybe not be enough for another. Is it better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all? Is it the loving or the losing that spurs us forward.
Thoughts dear friend, just thoughts....I was in a pontificating mood...
you are basically MADE to be a graduate student stephy belt. thank you for pontificating on my blog. i feel honoured.
wow, it's completely ironic to me (and i quite love the conincidence) that i happened to read this old post; i was pondering this exact quotation today as i was commuting.
here are my thoughts (in response to steph): in terms of spurring us onward, i feel that loving and losing both do this equally. it's in the love that we experience (whether in the moment or recalled with our warm feelings once its lost) that spurs us on in life. The reason it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all is because the value of such a depth of emotion is what creates richness in life. and it's the richness of this experience that makes its continuation (ie. losing it or not)irrelevant.
conversely, it's in the ache that we experience during the losing which enables us to understand the completeness that we will find in eternity. is it a human weakness that we only tend to hope and long for the glory of God when we are faced with the disparity between the wholeness that will be in this life and the next? Maybe the loving that we encounter before the loss is a tiny bit of earthly comprehension that we are granted before such a time that we finally "shall know fully"
in light of this, then, the loss shouldn't be something that should ever negate the love, since it points to something even fuller and even more complete than the love itself. Maybe this, then is the bigger human weakness...our inability to recognize what is to be gained in the loss when we are in the moment of our crisis. our humanity doesn't allow us to see that understanding the wholeness we will have in eternity may be greater than the conditional type of love that our broken, fallen beings can provide for each other. our yearning for love will never be realized because our earthly love will never be perfect, and if disillusioned into thinking so, it will undoubtedly be lost. is it wrong, then to long? no, but maybe while doing this we close ourselves to the possibility of something more.
am i cynical? morbid? maybe...but for those who have lost...is not meant to be either of the above, it supposed to be spurring us to hope. hoping in what we don't have now, but will have one day. the day that losing never follows loving.
ps. and no sharelle, not a silly blog, and no sharelle, not inadequate thoughts.
Post a Comment