When we lose love, we may at points hear from well-meaning friends, perhaps those older than us, that we should take comfort from the thought that at least we tasted proper love once in our lives.
This seems at best rather mediocre consolation.
It's true, we did have love.
It might have lasted six months or four years or fifteen years.
But the agony isn't that love didn't happen.
It's that we don't have it any longer.
Our sadness, though deeply understandable, reveals an implicit and rather unhelpful prejudice around happiness.
A nice thing that once occurred but no longer does so cannot, we believe, be of any use to us.
Our only plausible source of satisfaction stems from events that unfold in the present.
The past, stored in memory, cannot bring any realistic chance of solace or happiness.
