This Is Why We Hurt The Ones We Love

We don’t want to see them upset. We don’t want to be the reason they have tears in their eyes. But sometimes, breaking hearts is the only way to save them; their hearts and our own. Our own heart can survive the blow, we think, and they do bear the pain for a while. But then it ends up hurting us more than them.

We hurt other people to hurt ourselves.

Sometimes, breaking hearts seems to be the right thing. A little break. Not the whole of it. Because somewhere in the back of our minds, we see that this break will be a lot easier if it’s brought now, than when it becomes inevitable. It only hurts more later. And to save others the pain we think we foresee, we end up inflicting pain where there was no need for it in the first place.

Our minds and our hearts tell us that this is the only way out of the misery that awaits. That the present pain will cushion the blow of the hurt that is to come. But I think we’re only deceiving ourselves.

It hurts now, and it will hurt then. It might not hurt the same way, but it will hurt. And the kinds of hurts we hurt; we confuse them with being on the same level. As if it’s some sort of a race, who gets to hurt first. And who gets to have the prize. The prize being only more hurt.

We feel as if we’re saving them. It’s the option that seems more far fetched and just. We’re only thinking of the future, and we forget that the present has to be lived. That there’s a time now, where what we do affects how we feel now. We, as humans, evolve so much. Yet our capacity to believe in our evolution hinders us from seeing that what we know now might not be what we need later. So this blind faith in our false far sightedness leads us to doing what we believe is right. So we hurt the people in our lives.

We think it is justified for us to be the way we are right now. But we all know who we’re fooling in this case. It’s our own self. Maybe we think it’s a short cut to helping the other one. And sometimes, maybe we are helping them by this. Maybe we are right. Maybe we are wrong. But we go ahead and do it anyway. Maybe they’re ok. Maybe we’re not.

We spend so much of our time dealing with the conflict of “what if’s” in our lives. And here, we then think what if we hadn’t hurt them? What if we had kept hearts safe and sound? What if hearts were not meant to be broken? What if nothing came out of breaking apart like this? What if all this pain was to end in vain? Would we still do what we believe we have to do?

We can never know unless we’ve done it, can we? But what if we never did it? Would our hearts still be safe? Maybe. Maybe not.

But we go ahead and do it anyway.