“Too Far Gone” by The All-American Rejects… “Please speak slowly, my heart is learning. Teach me heartache, stop this burning…”

Some memories are difficult to remember. It is in their nature to be elusive and burrow themselves deeply in the recesses of your mind. They’re hidden because they are fading.

I can’t remember anything before I met her. You know, it really does feel that way when you fall in love. You’re left a little confused, wondering what life you had before you met that person. It feels like you started life anew, like you’re now walking over the memories of the times when you used to crawl through life. The sky travels through your pupils bluer than ever and your mind seems clearer. Both are cloudless. The chorus of birds in the morning give their resounding approval of another day in your life and the grass smells as sweetly as it would to ruminants. The light no longer hurts your eyes and you notice the colours of the rainbow in everything around you.

Within the last few times that I’ve spoken to my friends they have told me their own variations of, “You seem really happy. Well, you must be after all.” Whilst I don’t agree with living positively through negative reaction, for example, be happy because there is nothing to be unhappy about, it’s never always been easy to find something positive to invest my happiness in. Life is like a bank you can deposit units of happiness in. The more you invest, the more you could potentially be gaining interest on, and that’s how I see it.

Yes, you can be afraid and do all the risk-assessment you want, but with some things, being too prudent will have you missing out on more exciting ventures. And you must be able to reflect. There’s a well known question attached to the great philosopher, poet and critic George Santayana that goes, “Are those who do not remember history, condemned to repeat it?” You must be able to reflect on the times that have passed and use them to push yourself onwards. No matter what has happened and no matter how matte the lining on the clouds above you may have become, your life always goes on. Introspection and contemplation are both powerful tools. They are your knife and fork as you feast on the best that life has to offer. If you can look deeply inside of yourself and convince yourself that you have lived a great life with great love, then you’ll have become a better person as a result of it.

A quote you undoubtedly would have heard by now is Saint Augustine’s, “Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.” This quote invariably manifests itself in your mind following the end of a relationship you once held dear in your heart. It is supposed to help you to reflect and remember that all is not lost during those abstruse times. I know what it feels like to have my heart broken. I know what it feels like to hurt. I remember at those times I would make a desperate attempt to hold onto shreds of that time, only they were not shreds. They were shards. And shards being shards, they cut into me, making me bleed wherever I remained in contact with what I was trying to hold onto. Even with the crimson growing in abundance, it made sense to hold on. It continues to make sense in this way until you’ve had time to sit away from it and reflect on it. It is then that you realise you wasted so much of your time with the machines of self-pity. You wasted your time wallowing in the depths of something you had no control over. I’ve always believed in one thing through bad times and it is this: Sometimes things will turn out the way they do, regardless of whether you make it hard on yourself or not. If I ever had to impart one piece of personal wisdom, then it is this line. Please remember it.

I tell you, you are better off to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. You have to take the good with the bad and never be suspicious of the times when the good seemed to be present. With matters of the heart, that which does not kill you only makes you stronger. At the time when I was sat on the floor, with two pieces of my heart cupped in my hands, I never thought of these things that I am now so clearly able to tell you today. The pain can make you blind to everything that is good; everything that is good inside of you. You can’t let that die, because you will feel beautiful again. Those scars will disappear. You have become a better person because you have loved, even if it had been for a short time.

Altruism. This is a word that I came across consciously for the first time whilst reading “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins in a chapter where he was describing the unselfish act of parents giving up their lives to further that of the child. This act comes from evolutionary zoology where it is observed that we instinctively do things sometimes that are detrimental to our own life, but will benefit someone else. Altruism means to be selfless; to wish someone well on their continuation of a journey even though it is difficult for you to see them go, even if it is you who is the one that is going.

On a level, life is something that needs to be risked to be truly appreciated. It’s maybe the same reason you get that rewarding feeling inside of you when you’re riding a roller coaster or when you’re there with your eyes closed, experiencing your first real kiss. The rush you get, that’s the adrenaline. It’s your fight or flight mechanism firing off, preparing you for withdrawal or warfare. When your heart arrives at the gates of something new, you should always choose to stay and fight the battle if need be. Struggling with your emotions and wrestling with the part of you that wants to trust and believe in the other person is always a battle. At what point can you completely trust the people you love anyway? The truth is, you can never be totally sure, but you place your trust in them anyway. You do this because the rewards outweigh the risks by far and for that moment you can’t think of doing anything but share yourself with that person. Some things you share and some things you give away. Sharing is good for the both of you, but you have to give parts of yourself away to truly come away with something more.

I find myself having to borrow quotes to aid in wading my point across. After all, you’ve probably already heard them in your own way. There are many ways to interpret all these words, but the secret to appreciation is simple and was encapsulated perfectly in words by the great user of English, G.K. Chesterton. It’s one of my favourite quotes of all time and it goes like this: “The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.” When in the arms of your loved one, take it as something that can be taken away from you at any time, because by the ephemeral nature of the world, it can. Even if you have never been living this way, it wouldn’t hurt to strive to change your life and live it around this quote, because this can be applied to everything in life. This is because everything can expire.

I know memories expire when you continue time and time again to oversee them. How many of you can hold a photograph of your own in your hand and recall that very moment the shutter fired? Can you step into the photograph and walk around, feeling everything in three dimensions with all your senses? For me, photographs are not things that allow me to become lazy with my memories. They are personal treasures captured from hanging moments that are often spontaneous. They enhance the way I am able to remember things by taking account of my other senses besides sight. They are things that help me to remember the other things I cannot sense with my eyes. Taking a picture does not make me become reliant on it to remember that which was ensnared, because a picture is just that; a picture. It’s something you can only see with your eyes and it’s only when you attach yourself to it that it can paint a thousand words.