The Beautiful Ache of Love: A Journey Beyond Possession

The Beautiful Ache of Love: A Journey Beyond Possession

Is sorrow in love inevitable? Must one suffer simply for having loved? The joy of love seems always shrouded in sorrow. Love has been pierced by a thousand arrows of caution:
“Don’t walk that path—it’s strewn with thorns of grief,”
“Love is a mirage. As you approach, it retreats,”
“Try to grasp it, and like water, it slips through your fingers.”

As the poet Rilke once wrote, “For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,” and others have echoed: “Love is suffering. That’s its true nature.”

Yet no amount of warning ever deters the human heart. From age to age, we drink the bittersweet poison of love willingly—or because we simply have no choice. Love is neither optional nor rational. It doesn’t arise from mere will or desire. It’s as inevitable and unknowable as birth or death. Love is entirely one’s own, and yet uncontrollably transient—just like our fragile bodies, which are so intimately ours, yet forever perishing.

But must sorrow in love always be inescapable? What if love itself contains no sorrow at all?
What if we suffer only because we’ve loved the wrong way?

At the very start of love, we subconsciously fix our eyes on certain destinations. We crave to see our beloved constantly, to talk endlessly, to be near at all times. An insatiable thirst begins: I must have them. They must be mine. No one else’s.
So the destination becomes marriage.
And in that relentless craving lies the seed of suffering—because with desire comes the fear of loss.

But must I not long for the one I love? Of course. Who wouldn’t?
Yet perhaps it is the way we long that brings pain.

Imagine loving someone in such a way that you can never lose them. Even if they go far away. Even if they don’t love you back. Even if you never marry them.
What if your heart, once it loves, keeps them forever—no matter what the outside world does?
Yes, the body longs. But let the body pay the price for its longing. The heart asks for no transaction. It simply holds.

And even if—by some twist of fate—you do reach your destination, even if you marry, sorrow still lingers. For the thrill of pursuit fades quickly. Just like the climber who reaches Everest’s peak cannot live there—the joy of conquest fades as soon as it's achieved.

Love after marriage often loses its shimmer, not because love dies, but because we thought marriage was the end. We tried to trap love in a form—then wondered why it no longer felt free.

So perhaps love does come with sorrow. But not with pain.
The pain arises from our mistaken way of loving—not from love itself.

Because in true love, joy and sorrow dissolve into one. They become indistinguishable.
There is no “other” in love. No parts. No conditions.
There is only love. Entire. Absolute. Eternal.