Norma, I felt the same way after my parents died. It hurt so badly that I couldn't remember what the point was of loving someone with all your heart and then, bam, in the blink of an eye, they're gone with no good-bye, no word at all. How can someone so vital to your existence for so long suddenly be so utterly silent and so completely gone?!

How I wrestled long and hard with that whole Life/Death/Life cycle we all go through, not just when someone significant dies, but every day in so many ways with so many people and relationships, including self and God.

It wasn't easy. I wanted to stop loving. I wanted to retreat into a safe cabin deep in the woods somewhere remote and never come back out. But I chose to stay and wrestle it through. I'm no closer to being happy about the Death part of the cycle, but I know that Love/Life is the only choice for me now. I'd rather be in agony over loving someone than in agony over hating someone - or in an entirely different kind of agony because I never got to know anyone at all.

You're right, it's a double-edged sword, and all too often we feel the sting of the harsher edge of love...we put our hearts out there, pour our care and support into others' lives, and get called names we don't deserve and get misunderstood by people who don't have a clue and could care less who we really are underneath our words and wounds...it's daunting, frustratingly pointless at time, depressing if that's all we experience over a long period of time...but I think we will hurt either way, whether we love or withdraw and choose not to love.

All I can do is take it one day, one person, one encounter at a time, be the best (I personally translate that into "kindest") person I can be at that moment, which admittedly won't always be palatable to the other, and hope that we ripple even a feeble flicker of love and light instead of hatred and darkness into those encounters.

In the end, after all I've read and researched, the best philosophy for me personally still comes back to the Golden Rule I learned in early childhood, trying to treat others with the same respect and kindness I want others to show me. It ain't easy, never will be, but we're all still a work-in-progress and trying to get through each day as best as we can.

[ January 31, 2006, 01:59 PM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]