Many of us wonder about an age-old adage: is it better to love and lose or to not have loved at all?

The fascinating concept of love is that we can achieve this state in so many divergent ways. From the love we create with our friends, family, and pets to the love we attain from tv shows, artists, foods, and even material objects like our phones, makeup, shoes, clothes, etc., we as a society have established many varied relationships with the word “love".

But do we ever think about what it does to us?

We love so hard, and then we fall even more laborious.

What I mean by this is that love, the feeling we inaugurate with a lot of things and people, is only temporary. The people in our life begin to pass away. Couples break up and move on. The foods we used to love can start to fade away. The scent we used to crave can vanish from our liking. The style we used to gravitate towards can change. And then what do we do after? We start the cycle all over again; we find new people, new hobbies, new interests, new locations, and we begin to recreate that love with something else.

But what if we can’t? We can’t replace our grandparents or family members; we can’t replace the boy or girl we used to love, we can’t replace the pets that we used to have. It all has to be new to someone else, someone different.

What I mean is love can bring us the happiest times in our lives, and it can also show us the lowest points. We can experience complete joy and bliss but also experience grief and depression when it’s all over. So, is it better to experience that love and undergo those lowest points we experience in our lives? Or is it better to not deal with the griefing moments and the depression and all the hardship that comes with love?

Love is amazing, and love is hard. Love is like a drug; we crave it as a society. We want to be loved, we crave to feel love, and we desire to experience love. But then do we also crave the hardships, the sadness, and the griefing moments that come with it?

The hardest parts of someone’s life can be when we have to let go of something we loved and move on. Some people can rise and take that hardship and burden and turn it into strength and power, and other people can fall and dig a hole so deep that you don’t even recognize them anymore.

Sometimes it’s hard to keep yourself up after a loss of love; we feel empty, we feel alone, we feel like a part of us just got ripped away; Would you do anything not to experience that? Would you give up that feeling in the first place?

Most of us would probably say no, but if you think about it. Imagine not going through those hardships or downfalls and just undergoing a state of being content, but never in love or never feel that love again.

Everyone wants love, but no one wants to deal with a loss or failure that can come with it. So, would you give up the love you created with a boy or girl, the food you crave on the weekends, the pets you used to own, the technology we grasp so tightly onto just so that you don’t have to undergo misery or suffer ever again?