Smile, though your heart is breaking... do you always put a brave front on when you are hurt?

That sounds like sensible advice.. we should make sure we aren't being  over sensitive ... and taking things personally that we shouldn't..  But I guess that beyond that, if we are human then we care.. and if we care we run the risk of being hurt.. I guess it's better to care and get hurt than not to care? 

I think so, yes. As per Tennyson's "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

Although I do also believe in the possibility of caring without hurt -- or at least with full acceptance that pain is just the other side of the same coin.

I actually don't agree with that.

Feel free! Although, in a way, I had written three different things there, so with which do you disagree?

Love lost is better than never loved.

I didn't agree with that either when I first read Tennyson's line, even within the context of the poem (or eulogy, to a friend who had passed away). Perhaps you're thinking of something as a marriage breaking up in very bitter fashion -- a position in which I haven't been, although I have remained grateful for people with whom I eventually parted less amicably than I would have liked.

The instance of stoic philosophy that most impressed me in those days was when one Roman thinker (I can't remember which, and by "those days" I don't mean to claim I was there with him) consoled his wife over the loss of their young child, by expressing how beautiful it was to have had that child. I later encountered something similar with Nisargadatta Maharaj. We receive certain people into our lives, not knowing how it will end or when, but loving them genuinely is an enrichment.

(Now, in those cases where people go bonkers and do really destructive things to another, we might be talking about a different issue than love.)

"We receive certain people into our lives, not knowing how it will end or when, but loving them genuinely is an enrichment."

This made my heart skip a beat. Genuinely knowing and believing this is how we're able to go on loving at all. 

Always nice to see you, Savvy; thanks. These are things that concern me regularly, and I do need to admit I have never had such great cause to grieve as would test whether I could effectively hold on to and apply those thoughts.

I like how you put it: "this is how we're able to go on loving at all."

Back at you, Danilo. 

I suspect you'll be a fast learner. We're frequently reminded that there are peaks and valleys on this journey. The longer we have the honor of remaining on this part of the journey, the more lessons we have the opportunity to learn. 

Excellent! Just how it should be.. if you don't tell them then they never have a chance to learn from their mistakes or to correct them 

Someone needs to mansplain it to you. 

 

  I do much better listening to women. 

~

Yes, I meant MY definition of mansplain. 

  I’ll be right over. (Remember, don’t tell Jane. Shhhhhh!)

~

She's already here. We're planning and plotting. I'm trying to advocate against violence, but you better be careful. 

 

  Hey, wait . . .

:[

There's mounting evidence that that's the most healthy way to be! Hiding feelings can lead to a lot of problems 

How is that weakness, Zack?