| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 11 |
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If we know that ours must be this deep anguish and loneliness some time, we might be tempted to say, “It is better to go through the years unblessed by tender love than to take into my life this joy only to lose it yonder, and then walk on without it, all the lonelier and more desolate for having had it so long.”
But to do this would be to miss rich blessing and good. It might indeed be easier in a sense for us never to have any friends. It might spare us the pain and sense of loss when they are taken away from us. But we should miss meanwhile all that rich, pure friendships bring into our life. Love blesses us with unspeakable blessings. It saves us from ourselves. It inspires us for noble living. It transforms our dull nature and transfigures it. No depth of sorrow that can possibly follow the loss of the companionship could overbalance the blessing of a holy friendship given to us even for a few years. Tennyson says most truly in “In Memoriam:”–
“Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”
To have known of the sorrow and loneliness, and to have shut one’s heart against the friendship in dread of its loss, would have been to rob one’s life of its best blessing. Even grief is not too great a price to pay for love. Love’s blessing stays in the beloved one is gone. Its influence is permanent. The work it does is on the soul’s very substance and abides forever. Its impression is ineffaceable. Tennyson says again:–
“God gives us love; something to love
He leads us; but when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone.”
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