We all want to be loved. Quite probably it’s one of the few things in life that we need. Every once in a while we’ll meet a person we fall for and we find that they are the one we hope to be loved by. With any luck, the feelings are indeed returned.
But then what? Will the two of you embark on a relationship? That’s what most people hope for. But what if that is not an option? There’s a multitude of reasons why that might be so.
What the reason is, doesn’t even matter. At least not right away. The simple fact of the matter is that you can’t be with the one you love.
So what do you do? What indeed…
You keep loving. We don’t have a choice in the matter. Love can neither be turned on nor off. We keep loving and hope for the best.
What we can choose is what we do. And what that might be, everybody has to decide for themselves. It is at this point that it matters why we can’t be with the one we love. Because the reason will influence what we might do. How we choose to deal with the situation.
Hoping for the best is, after all, not necessarily going to cut it. Hope will only carry us so far. In the end, we also need to protect ourselves. Our silly little hearts are not very good at protecting themselves. Especially when they are in love.
So what do we do?
There’s no ultimate answer to that. Not even a right course of action to take. Or necessarily a wrong one. The only wrong thing to do is to deliberately set out to hurt someone else.
If you don’t know what to do, try to be patient, especially with yourself. It’s the only thing you can really influence. It’s easy to give up, to lose hope, to let your heart break with the impossibility of a situation. Letting go of your worries, anxieties and of your fears is not easy.
But it is possible to love without asking for anything in return. Because Katherine Hepburn was quite right, “Love has nothing to do with what you’re expecting to get – only with what you’re expecting to give – which is everything.”
Once you realize that it’s not so much about being loved or being with the one you love, letting go is not so difficult. You do have to keep on doing that, though. You have to keep letting go because our hearts want what they want and you’ll feel that greed over and over again.
At the same time, I would never suggest to give up on that love, your own or that of the one who returns your feelings. Even if you can’t be together, whatever the reason might be, that doesn’t mean you should walk away from your feelings.
Bertrand Russell said, “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
Not now does not mean never. Though every once in a while it will feel like not ever.
It’s a difficult path to walk. But every moment of happiness tends to be worth it. And we do deserve to be happy. Not everyone is able to pursue their happiness, but that should never mean that we have to forsake it.
As it is, I believe our hearts will guide us. Sure, wanting something doesn’t mean we ought to have it. But wanting something, or someone, enough does make us take on the impossible.
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