Love, Loss, and the Journey Within

On dealing with heartbreak, why I don't believe in the idea of seeking discomfort, and the story of a prince who discovers he has a lot in common with his enemy. Oh, and there's a cat, too.

June 29, 2023

"He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct."

This quote from the 2000 movie In The Mood For Love by director Wong Kar-wai sums up a story of two people enmeshed in a dynamic of losing love, finding it in an unexpected place, and losing it again.

(If you've not seen this movie, I highly recommend it. Finish reading this newsletter and go watch it. Or put it at the top of your movie list. I mean it.)

A recurring theme in this film is the end of love. How do we recover from heartbreak? Do we recover at all? If this topic has been covered in art for about a thousand years, why do we still keep coming back to it?

In his films, Wong Kar-wai proposes we don't recover from loss, but are faced with a choice -- learn to move forward with it or stay stuck in the same place.

Some of his characters, after much struggle, find themselves back to square one, ready to get back on their feet. But other characters stay stuck in their grief and close themselves off from the possibility of loving again. Is there anything more human than that?

I had an idea for a poem -- just one line: "If love doesn't die but transforms, why does your silence sound like a funeral?" Love doesn't transform. We do. We come out of love a different person. Art serves to reflect that very personal journey in which our relationship with people, whether in our past or our present, is transformed by the decisions we make and the previous experiences that shape us.

This week's short story

In a distant past, a young prince prepares to meet his enemy.

The horns of war that haunted the prince's dreams echoed in his head as he waited for his enemy inside his tent for a parley. The cool October breeze and yellowing leaves made his men hopeful they'd get to sleep in their own beds soon, and he hoped to solve this conflict once and for all without having to bury any more of them. Unlike his father, he cared less about glory on the battlefield and more about draughts and crops and the dwindling treasury.

But peace was a strange concept for some. He knew men who relished battlefield blood and smoke, but all it did was make him old, weary, and sleepless. With every new campaign, his home felt less and less like a home. His wife's arms were just another cold, muddy field, and his children's laughter merged with the screams of the slain.

Read the rest on my blog.

From the blog

Anyone who's been adulting for some years will know that maintaining a reading habit becomes harder as responsibilities start to pile up. You look at your stack of unread books longing for those days when you had more free time to pick them up. But what if I told you it's not about having more time?

This week's photo

Cat in a car park. Jebel Jais, 2023

Gear:

Pentax ME Super

Ilford Delta 100 35mm

Short thoughts

Heartbreak is a human experience, but it's also a personal one. Sometimes it's a thorny road to greener pastures. Other times, it's a slow, prolonged walk in circles that traps you in the same place for months or years. What we need to remember is that every journey is valid.

Where's the balance between self-improvement and self-acceptance? On the one hand, at times growth requires change and sacrifice. On the other hand, it’s easy to use self-improvement and ambition as excuses for our lack of self-compassion. We work so hard to be somebody, but we don’t want to be ourselves. That’s why I no longer believe in the need to monitor every second of my life to optimise it, and why I don’t subscribe to the idea of seeking discomfort. Don’t power through. Flow.

This week's quote

How sweetly time

disposes of us

as we go arm in arm

over the Bridge of Details:

Your turn to chop.

My turn to cook.

Your turn to die for love.

My turn to resurrect.

Leonard Cohen. “To A Young Nun.” The Book of Longing, 2006.

Thanks

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Next week: why we write, and a short story about a woman who creates a family for herself in a rather unusual way.

Hungry but hopeful,

Cecilia

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