At the beginning of his rather odd and surprisingly dark musical career, singer-songwriter Chris Rea did something that showed his character in ways that I have found somewhat refreshing and more than a little unusual. He wrote a song to comfort his younger sister over her first heartbreak, giving her two bits of encouragement that represent two poles of the responsible approach to matters of the heart [1]. First, Chris comforts his sister’s crying and comments that the heartbreak that she is suffering is a sign of a lack of love in the cad who took advantage of her. Second, he reminds her that this is only the beginning, and that love is full of heartbreak for most of us, and that we have to steel ourselves to endure disappointments and frustrations until we find a relationship that can last for life.

This is not necessarily an easy lesson to learn, and it is easy to become cynical over such frustrations, as well as the sometimes interminable length of time it takes to actually find a good relationship. It is likewise all too easy to feel trapped with the first person in a difficult life who shows some kind of interest and attention, only to find that people change once they think that someone has been reeled in and caught. Our innocence is not valued, either by ourselves or others while we have it to any great degree, and all too quick we become embittered at the wickedness we see and at the corrosive effect of the lies that we hear that make a mockery of our hopes and longings. Yet despite that corrosive bitterness that is all too often inside of us, there exists within us some small but mighty hope that things do not have to be this way. This hope makes us vulnerable to those who might tell us what we want to hear to gratify their own lusts, but it also is the open door to redemption that allows us to overcome whatever past we have had to endure and have a different sort of beauty that comes through our suffering and redeems it.

Unlike Chris Rea, I have never had any younger sisters of my own. I have, however, had younger cousins who I helped comfort and encourage during some of their first heartbreaks and I have seen plenty of young women who feel deeply in love with the first young men who awakened them to physical intimacy in any sense, young men who often were unworthy of such tender feelings of first love from lovely and passionate young women who nevertheless felt bound in heart to those they first gave their body to in some fashion. I do not think that the young men in question, who were often passionate in their own fashion, meant to be deliberately cruel about it, but they simply did not respect what they had been given, perhaps because they did not pay a heavy enough cost for it beforehand [2]. We tend to value what we have to pay for in some fashion, not what it is given to us with no strings attached.

There is a heavy cost that is paid when people make promises in the dark and speak the language of noble and high ideals but are not willing to live up to those claims. For one, there is the brokenness that results from trust that has been betrayed and from the pain of loss from being attacked at our most vulnerable points. For another, the natural response of people to seek to protect themselves where they are weak, so that they may appear strong and therefore deter others from causing the same sort of hurts again makes it hard to believe any sort of claims, whether explicit or implicit, that is made about being a person of honor and integrity and noble character. The existence of counterfeits threatens the value of the genuine article, something that all of us ought to pay attention to.

And so we see the wisdom of Chris Rea’s advice to his grieving younger sister. In seeking to retain some level of decency and honor in a world that has too little of either, we are faced with two difficult challenges that have to be simultaneously met in our lives and the lives of those around us. We must possess a certain strength of character that is not easily deterred and that can endure the trials that life provides during the dark nights of our hearts and souls. Yet we must not let this strength of character harden our hearts either to prevent us from recognizing genuine love and tenderness from others or in keeping us from providing that too others, especially those who need and deserve it from us. The need for wisdom and strength of will that does not overwhelm our capacity for sweetness and gentleness requires a certain sense of balance, a certain complicated approach to a complicated world full of complicated people. For the first stirrings of longing within us are not an end, they are only the beginning of a lifetime filled with difficulty and moments full of grace and wonder. We cannot afford to be blind to either the magnitude of the challenges we face or to the beauty and love and kindness we will find along the strange course of our lives.

[1] At least that is one possible meaning of the song’s lyrics:

http://www.lyricsdepot.com/chris-rea/fool-if-you-think-its-over.html

[2] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/younger-now-than-we-were-then/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/book-review-love-no-matter-what/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/if-music-be-the-food-of-love-play-on/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/there-is-love-wherever-there-is-song/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-the-intractable-dilemma-of-a-single-young-man/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/lovers-in-a-dangerous-time/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/and-if-she-is-a-door-we-will-enclose-her-with-boards-of-cedar/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/do-not-stir-up-nor-awaken-love-until-it-pleases/