Letting Go

Loss is an inevitable part of living. We lose material things, we lose family, we also lose friends. Sometimes they die, at other times we drift away, and sometimes we must painfully part ways because we have changed, grown distant or have simply developed divergent interests. It is all part of human existence. Are these experiences painful? Yes they are all very painful at times. But life is not our friend. Life has no conscience; it does not care whether we hurt or whether we don't; it just rumbles through, and if we are in its way, it rumbles right over or past us. And yet we need compassion. It is the way we are.
 We are social beings with a capacity to care. We have learnt this truth about ourselves through an awareness of our own need for compassion; out of our own thirst to have the care of other human beings like ourselves. Even the most brutish human will sense, however slight, the need for compassion some day.
 Broken relationships cause inner pain and painful tears, but without it there will be no growth. There is no separation without pain of varying degrees and sorts, but there is also no chance of growth if we do not let some things and even some people go.
 Life may not be our friend, but this is where our love for our own selves must stand as substitute for life's incapacity to love us. We have to, in this world, love ourselves enough to pick ourselves up however slowly, and however painfully. . . . and move on.