THE NOBLE COURSE

In all of the movies and television shows I watched and all of the books I read, I always admired the men who, in the face of difficulty and strong emotions, always chose the right and noble course. They would not give in to the temptress, choosing instead to love the upright and good woman. They would not choose love over duty, selfishness over selflessness.
They were examples I always wanted to follow.
And I thought I did and always could.
But I'd never really had to make the truly noble sacrifice, to bow out and let the woman I love go off without me, to face the stark reality of living the remainder of my life not only without the love I'd lived and longed for all of these years but also without the hope of ever being with her again. I realized it is one thing to believe in the noble cause and to always want to choose the noble road, but it is quite another to have to make the choice to let love go, to allow the one you love choose someone else, not you.
The hardest part of that, I think, is trying to decide when it is right to fight for the one you love and when it is right to let the one you love go. When is love best shown by standing up for the one you love and when is love's high road letting that person go? On one hand, I want to fight tooth and nail for her, to prove to her that I love her in good times and bad and will battle through thick and thin to be with her, that she is worth the pain and effort. On the other hand, I want her to know that I will not make her life miserable by not understanding that, for her, this is over, even though for me it will never be over, not even when I die. The love will go on, into the next life.
So which is the right and noble path, to fight for the one you love or to let her go? Neither offers a pleasant future -- fighting, quite possibly in vain, for a love that may well be over is to be Don Quixote instead of Cyrano deBergerac; surrendering love, giving up, means facing a future without love ever again, with lingering doubts about what might have been if only I had fought for us or, worse yet, if I'd only done something different during the time we were together.
The choice always seems so clear in print, in a movie, on television. But, like so many things, life is far more complicated and complex than it is crystallized for our mass consumption. The world, even in Technicolor, is never black and white. There are those gray areas that challenge us and make us wonder which way to turn. To fight for love or surrender it forever? Which is the noble, right and true path? And which will serve her best?
I wish I knew.