If happiness stood before you, if everything you ever wanted in a relationship -- love, romance, spontaneity, companionship, humor, collaboration, trust, sharing, shared interests, tenderness, beauty and passion -- was right in front of you, you'd grab for it, right?
Who among us does not want to find that one person, that perfect partner with which to spend the rest of our lives? Who would walk away from the chance at bliss? At happiness? At being with your soulmate, your better half, the one person who completes you?
Ahh, but what if that came with the knowledge that it will not last, that what you see before you will be with you for a year or two and then slowly fade away until, at the end, the love has turned to hate and he/she will loathe the thought of you and run as far from you as he/she can?
Would you still want those few years, those precious memories, those shared moments? Or would you rather not reach that mountaintop nirvana because the coal mine of despair awaits at the end? Is even a brief glimpse of love, of that one perfect relationship, worth the price you would have to pay? And if you love the other person would you also rather not put them through the end? Would you rather they not carry around the hate they will have for you? Wouldn't it be better for them and for you if the two of you never even meet?
There is, of course, a flaw in this self-argument. In order for the relationship to end in agony, it must start. And you must love him/her, or else all of this is mere conjecture, pure theory. You can't know, when a relationship starts, where it might be going. You can't see that it will end "happily ever after" or in a bitter, spite-laced conversation. All you can do is risk your heart, risk your future, risk your hopes, risk your dreams. You could end up a big winner, taking the jackpot -- love for a lifetime -- or you could end up broke and broken in the street with nothing left and nothing to look forward to.
So you can live your life as a hermit -- literally or figuratively -- and take no such risk and claim it is all in order to spare the one you might love, and yourself, from the potential sorrow of a relationship that does not last. Or you can choose to love and risk the piercing ache of longing and loss, of emptiness and ending, of sorrow and sadness over one you still love with all of your heart, mind, soul and body, who no longer wants to see you, talk to you, hear about you, acknowledge you, today or evermore.
Every day there is a choice to be made.
Which will it be?
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