Someone else once said, "It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all." That's it! That is what makes love so special. Love is special because it doesn't come easy and if it does, it won't stay with the same ease. Love is a decision, a commitment, and requires a strong determination. Please notice that I did not say that love is a feeling. Love provides many powerful feelings, but if what you have had in the past was based on a feeling then it was not love at all.
In spite of the pain that I have experienced in my life, I have golden treasures from the love that I have experienced. They are treasures that neither time nor any person can take from me. If you can look down inside yourself and see the joy and warmth that you shared at one time and know that it can be even better, even if you don't feel it now, you will start to open up your heart once again. Love is worth the risk. Just don't repeat the same mistakes. My mistake was in reacting to pain with distance, hatefulness, and even dishonesty. I've learned to deal with pain now with the truth-- regardless of the results.
Adversity and pain are part of everyone's life. How you deal with that pain is determined in your own heart. We are the ones who consciously determine which way we will go. To paraphrase Ella Wheeler Wilcox's poem, "The Winds of Fate:"
One ship sails west
Regardless of how the winds blow.
It is the set of the sail
And not the gale
That determines the way we go.
