I recently said goodbye to one of my best friends who will spend the next nine months in Africa as a missionary. Hugging her neck before she walked out of my Starkville apartment for the last time brought buckets of tears to my eyes. “I only wish that you could stay here forever,” I thought to myself.
Honestly though, do I? Do I want her to confine herself to the limited opportunities Starkville has to offer? Do I really think that she would ever reach her full potential by never leaving this tiny piece of land called Mississippi (or the United States for that matter)? In reversed conditions, would I want other people to wish that for me? Of course not.
The situation seems crystal clear when I think about it like that, but it has taken a long time for me to reach this understanding. After 22 years (and a few days), I have finally realized that it all goes back to that “If you love someone, set them free” idea. There are certainly multiple meanings to be taken from this statement, but the one that has jumped out at me recently is the idea that if you love someone, then you will value their happiness above your own. A bird may look pretty and sing beautifully from its perch within the cage that you have constructed for it, but if you love your little feathered friend, set him free because he will much happier on the outside of the cage than on the inside. That said, it is easier to say these things than to actually do them. But what is life if not a struggle?
A couple of weeks ago, I heard a man boast about the fact that he had never felt the sting of heartache, and I still can’t figure out how this can be a good thing. Everyone who has ever loved has had an object of their affection taken away from him or her (at least physically), and the natural consequence of this loss is usually heartache. So has this guy never loved? If so, then my pity rests with him.
Love is where we humans find our happiness. Some of us love people: family, friends, boyfriends and girlfriends. Some of us love things: philosophy, football or waffles, for example. And some of us love God (or gods, as the case may be). It does not seem to matter from where we derive our love. Love always seems to make us happy. As it is, the popular saying “Love is all you need” is not quite complete in this day and age of mortgages, rising gas prices and terrorist threats. It should be amended to “Love is all you need to be happy,” which I think is quite a bit more accurate.
If you have never felt grief over losing someone important to you (even if they are only relocating to Africa for a year), then perhaps you have never loved. If you have never loved, maybe you have never been happy. If you have never been happy and are perfectly content with the fact, you should probably just go ahead, paint your fingernails black and join up with the emo crowd.
However, if you want to be happy, then start loving. Certainly, you will not be able to predict where and when heartache will come, but you can rest assured that it will come. The thing that most people tend to forget is that heartache in and of itself is not a bad thing.
As you seek out love to replace love lost, then you will gain a new love (e.g. finding a replacement bird after setting that first bird free). If ever you regain the lost love, then you will have two loves (i.e. old bird plus new bird). If not, then you still have the new love to cherish (a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush). Whatever heartache you experience along the way will be proportional to the happiness that you have already experienced in this life (e.g. bird metaphors are enjoyable, but they also have a sadness of equal magnitude attached to them that will come into play if ever my editor cuts them from print).
So love. Love freely, honestly and openly. Love with all of you heart, mind, body and soul. And when one of your friends decides to move to a different continent for an extended period of time, let her go without too much of a struggle. Love her and let her be happy. Cherish her happiness as you would cherish your own. Twenty-two years in, that is the only recipe for sustaining a happy life that has ever worked for me.