The experience of heartbreak, I believe, is that of the most painful kind of incongruency and understanding, or the lack thereof. It is something that takes man by surprise and pierces his very being in a rather sharp and sudden way, even threatening to tear him apart and destroy him. And mind you, it never goes away without the harshest outcomes and consequences.
The heartbreak is a multi-faceted enigma that strikes all persons involved in various relationships. It comes along with a person sensing the loss of meaning, direction, and significance of a particular relationship, and one is compelled to do something about it. Most of the time, the only inevitable option is to learn to let go and accept the fact that things do not go our own way. It could happen that one's relationship used to be a source of joy and consolation, but as time goes by, it becomes bland, losing its purpose and meaning. Or it could be an acceptance of the fact that a particular relationship would not work both in the present and in the future. More possible, it could be a realization that relationships are not what one's needs are for the moment.
Whatever the reasons are, the bottom line is that a heartbreak strikes upon us, impinges upon a different kind of pain which goes deeper than the usual feelings of misery brought by simple failures and loneliness. This "existential pain" made man feel that there is a large part of himself, his very own existence, that was pulled apart from him. Everything looked like a bad investment, without any good return in it. The heartbreak is, indeed, a death of the self.
It has to be one of the most painful experience, perhaps next to those that rank next to one's own death, but I believe that as bad and painful as it might be, it is inevitably a part of life, a phase towards growing and being. I say that it is a moment of awakening into the fountain that gushes forth which is reality.
The heartbreak is a slap in the face which wakes us up to the bleak complexity of reality. It reminds us that there are no such thing as fairy tale endings, when everything goes well and ends happily ever after, according to our very own terms. It lets us realize that in this world, anything can happen, that this world is composed of a multitude of possibilities, including those that we were not able to think of or plan for.
In a sense, this picture of reality presented to us could become a moment of disappointment, but also a moment of wonder and excitement. It is natural for man to be disappointed with something that he cannot control. But then, I believe that eventually, he would find that this uncertainty would push him to look at what unfolds, to think about them and find out what it means for him.
It is only with the latter that the experience of heartbreak, the feeling of pain and brokenness, will become meaningful and significant. Instead of convincing us that the meaning of our love is a dead end, it instead opens us up not only to various things that could happen and choices that could be made, but also to different meanings of the events that happened in the context of our human existence. When one discovers these things, the pain and brokenness felt becomes more real, more important, more human. In his thinking, man now sees the experience of heartbreak not as a moment of despair, but a moment of exploration, of being available to the reality that unfolds, not being tied to his expectations and plans, but simply letting everything be. He sees it as a moment of greater openness to what is revealed, to what is given before him.
In fact, to a greater extent, the experience of heartbreak allows us to hope, to patiently wait and lean towards the light in this experience of darkness. It allows man to let go and move on, to ask time to take over and change everything, most especially the meaning of these things in his very own existence. The experience of a heartbreak eventually allows us to a greater love, something that is not tied to our own definitions and categories, but is completely about the other. It allows us to reach out to the other in a different yet more meaningful way. It lets us realize that we can love more than we expect ourselves to. It wakes us up to the fact that our loving, even though it comes in various forms and degrees, knows no boundaries, and this becomes true only if we allow it to penetrate our lives.
Indeed, the heartbreak, painful as it may seem, wakes us up. It becomes a moment of awakening not only to Being, but also to our capacity as humans, as beings who are called to love.
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