If you love, there will be sorrow…

Life is fragile and there will come a time for all of us when we experience seasons of loss. The REM song reminds us that “Everybody cries. Everybody hurts sometime“. The history of my painful losses include the death of my beloved Grandmother during a Christmas Eve house fire, the sudden fatal heart attack of my favorite Uncle and Godfather, the losing fight my wife and Mother of my two children fought against breast cancer and most recently the slow decline of my 87 year old father and best friend who suffers from COPD and has been placed in Hospice care.

During each of these losses I have suffered periods of profound sorrow. I loved them deeply and they were a major positive influence on helping me to become the person that I am today. I am who I am because of who they were, and because of the sacrifices they made on my behalf. They loved me first before I was able to fully love them. They supported me and cheered for my successes and taught me that losing can sometimes be more important than winning.

Love is not without cost. When we dare to love, we risk being hurt. Sorrow is the price we pay for choosing to love. I read somewhere once that the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference – a conscious effort not to invest any energy in growing the relationships we have with others.  We can decide not to fully love the people in our lives and to remain indifferent – insulating ourselves from the possibilities of getting hurt by them. This is the sentiment in the Simon & Garfunkel song I am a Rock in which they sing:

“…if I never loved I never would have cried – I am a rock, I am an island – and a rock feels no pain and an island never cries”

It’s true, if we love there will be sorrow and pain and sacrifice; but what is the alternative? To not love? To avoid tenderness? To miss out on the joy that comes from sharing life’s small and big moments with people you care about? To never understand what it means to be fully human?  That would be an alternative that would be a much greater loss.

So be grateful for those you love and those who love you, celebrate the time you have with them because it will not last forever, lean on them when your burdens become hard to bear and take solace during your seasons of sorrow knowing that the dead live on in the hearts of those who have loved them.