heartbreak
I broke up with my girlfriend of 1.5 years. It’s painful. A form of grief, a letting go of imagined futures.
In the end, we were simply incompatible. It’s ok to realise this, and it’s ok to fail relationships.
I want to reflect on a few realisations through this process.
The first is that the value of heartbreak is that when the heart breaks, it usually breaks open.
It becomes more porous to suffering, your own and by extension others. In that seed of realisation, is kindness.
I think of a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye :
Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.
Before you know what kindness is, you must lose things.
I now know something that I cannot have learned through any other way. The visceral act of doing/going through/becoming something trumps simply learning through reading or observing.
The second is the wisdom of uncertainty. In Buddhist philosophy, the reality of uncertainty is emphasised again and again. Yet, simply reading it is not enough.
One must experience certainty being shattered multiple times. Viscerally see the pain and suffering generated, and look for an alternative view.
The middle way is to allow the expectation, give it space, welcome it into your home, but hold onto it loosely.
One must observe the expectation arise, notice it and gently realise what it is. A tight grip on wanting the future to be a certain way (or aversion to it not being a certain way) is suffering.
I think of Pema Chodron writing about impermanence and uncertainty :
It’s not impermanence per se, or even knowing we’re going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught. Rather, it’s our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation. Our discomfort arises from all of our efforts to put ground under our feet, to realize our dream of constant okayness. When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness. Another word for that is freedom—freedom from struggling against the fundamental ambiguity of being human.
There truly is no ground under our feet. And that is okay. Because there is no floor either. Relax into the falling.
Lastly, is a reminder that each moment is simply a lesson in learning about yourself.
You now understand your preferences, what works and what doesn’t, a clearer view of what you want in a relationship, how to live with another and support them, and how to end a relationship.
One door closes, an infinite number remain open.
(Created by Tim Urban)