208. We suffer, not because a relationship ended but because of what we think about it ending

Everyone knows that dating can bring heartbreak. At least it looks that way. Something ends in a relationship: it could be a long romance or even just a short period of dating. But when it ends we often feel pain, sometimes excruciating pain. It seems natural that we’d feel pain and loss for something that has ended. Everything in life seems to say that that’s the way life is; it always hurts when something ends.

But sages over the centuries have been seeing and saying something different. They say that when you look closely the pain from loss only comes about because we think what has ended shouldn’t have ended. We want it our way rather than the way it is. Life, however, doesn’t care what we want and it doesn’t alter itself whether we’re suffering or not.

Life is a great teacher, and the workings of nature give us a simple way to view it. It’s easy to see in nature that everything changes. Change means something ends to make way for something new. Notice, it ends. Seasons end; day ends, night comes; plants grow and die; rain comes and goes; our heartbeat ends, to be replaced by a rest period; the incoming tide ends and begins to move out again. Everything ends. Everything changes. That change is in front of us at every moment even as each moment ends to make way for the next one.

Now, as obvious as that is, we still seem to have the idea that a relationship shouldn’t end, and when it does we hurt because after all everyone hurts when a relationship ends that we wanted to continue. But that suffering we feel isn’t the reality of life. We’ve made up our own suffering. Our war with life is what hurts and lacks any feeling of love.

Seeing life as it is, however, is love. There’s no judgment, no resistance, no fighting. When you see that a relationship is over you know it’s run the full course it was meant to run. You know that because it ended. The sages constantly taught that Life is love and that it’s living itself just fine. We can be completely happy and at peace if we don’t argue with it. Without opinions about how life should be we simply see it as it is, without judgment, with love.

You may be thinking, “This guy obviously hasn’t had relationship heartbreak because he just doesn’t know how it can hurt.” Yes, I know. I’ve been there. And it hurt a lot because I didn’t know it was only my thoughts about it that were causing my suffering. I thought it was the circumstance. But circumstances and events and what people say and do can’t ever hurt us emotionally when we see reality instead of our home-made, self-centered dream.

I know there’s naturally emptiness when a relationship ends. There seems to be a hole in your gut and sometimes you can’t think of much else except your loss. But those are all thoughts. Remember, when you’re in deep sleep and not thinking you’re not hurting. So it clearly isn’t the ending but your thought about the ending that makes you hurt.

Seen with real clarity we can realize that we don’t really know this relationship should have continued. Rather, in fact, we do know: it shouldn’t have continued… because it didn’t. We know something ends to make way for something new. When we can watch what new comes into being to replace what ended we just see life with amazement and curiosity, not pain. Life has shown all of us through direct experience that an experience we thought was the end of the world was replaced by what we later saw as a blessing. Endings aren’t bad unless we say they are. Otherwise we just notice that endings are the natural way life functions. Let it be, enjoy the adventure of what comes next, and be happy. Living in “not knowing” can be just plain fun.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer