Loving and Losing

Baron Alfred Tennyson said 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’ (In Memoriam. xxvii. Stanza 4.) I guess my entire life I have thought of this verse when I consider the loss of someone I love. The disconnect that comes when someone dies or just breaks fellowship or the future dreams of romance or sharing our lives together as one are shattered (which is in itself another form of death – but a discussion for another time and place). I have always thought of the hurt and pain that accompanies such a turn of events. I have pondered the heart ache. This never seemed, to me, to be of much comfort. The thought that my life has somehow been enriched by the experience, and then having the rug jerked out from under me, that somehow this is better than not having the experience at all has always seemed a bit of a stretch for me.

My experience has been that having loved and lost has left me with a profound sense of aloneness. Begin alone has never felt so painful as it does after losing someone that you have loved. It is a pain that never goes away. Over time it dulls, but is always there. Sometimes a smell, a familiar noise or sight brings it all back … just like it was on the day it all took place. And life does not just deliver one such of these experiences in a lifetime, no way. Our lives are filled with such experiences of various intensities and circumstances. Some we played a role in, some just happened to us. But one thing is for sure, these experiences are cumulative. The older we get, the more we love, the more we lose … it is a vicious and painful cycle.

So, why did Lord Byron say what he did? Was he crazy? Maybe. Or maybe we could look at loving and losing and loneliness from another perspective. God created us to live in community. He created us for connections, love if you will. He created us with a need for connection like a newborn (or any of us really) has a need for nourishment. We need, or crave, a connection to the one who made us. He made us with a need for others. We come with two plug ins, one for God and another one for others, people and creation as a whole. This need for love also comes with a deep seated need to love others. True love does not seek its own fulfillment but also seeks to reciprocate and give back. It seeks to cling to and be clung unto. True love thinks more about what can be done for others than what they can receive. Love is happily a two way street.

When we lose someone we love, we feel pain. The pain comes from a need to be connected and that need for whatever reason is no longer being met. The result is loneliness. We become profoundly aware that when we loved we felt complete, whole and unified. And, when that love is gone, we feel alone, incomplete and disconnected. We feel pain. The pain would not have been there unless we had loved. We would not have loved if we did not feel a deep need to love. Our deep need to love is rooted in our creators design.

Some choose to respond to the pain by staying disconnected, by trying to fill the void with anything that promises to “stay put”. But such things don’t love back and are therefore unfulfilling. If left in this disconnected state, one will grow increasingly selfish in a futile attempt to “plug into” the socket that can only be truly satisfied by others. We seek self to the exclusion of others so as to avoid the pain of losing them. This in contrast is a more profound pain than that of losing someone you love. Left to continue a person descends into insanity.

Some choose to re-connect to feed that within them that desires to be loved and desires to love back. This was the central message of Jesus. We are to love God and love others. He encouraged us and even challenged us that loving others in the face of the pain associated with it is a necessary component of loving others. He demonstrated this on the cross when He laid His life down for you and me to show us that true life comes when we take the risk and love even if to love means we hurt or die in the process.

Jesus came to save the world and heal creation. His primary message was to love God and love others. There will be pain … it’s OK … it’s part of the design. The alternatives are more painful yet. It truly is better to have loved and lost, then to have never loved at all. To never have loved at all is to deny your purpose for living and to deny your soul the nourishment it needs to truly live.