How do you heal a broken heart? A broken heart. Perhaps it’s a philosophical broken heart, a financial broken heart, educational, and of course the one we often think of, the broken heart relative to love.
So, how does one overcome this? Well, this story began with one of my students actually, who had just written a major exam, trying to get into an important university, at least the university she wanted to get into, and she failed.
She didn’t succeed. And this wasn’t some minor test, unfortunately. This had a life altering consequence, and she was totally distraught, to say the least.
So, I tried to counsel her, thinking that I could somehow essentially heal this broken heart. And I came to find that this is really, in reality, impossible. Because when you actually have a broken heart, it’s much like a broken leg.
You can put the cast on, and the wound will heal, but the experience remains with you. And I think that’s essential when it comes to properly healing a broken heart. So then you can start from naming what has actually happened.
You actually have to describe what’s happened here. I did fail this test. I did invest in this stock, and I lost potentially all my money.
I did have some falling out with perhaps my father, my mother, something to this nature, and I did lose the love of my life. The love of my life is gone for whatever reason, and he or she is not coming back. So I’ve named the womb.
And then I think as with all things, grief is an emotion that I give myself, because you cannot give me grief. I must give it to myself. And by giving it to myself, I can also therefore learn how to control it.
And one controls it by being, I think to a very large extent, philosophical. You do take those walks in the mountains. You do learn to talk to yourself.
And you accept, how does it go? That the present is the only reality that I truly occupy, because the future is essentially anxious, and the past is potentially filled with sorrow. So I return to the present.
There’s nothing I can change, because the past is gone. It’s finished. And then I think to myself that I have to protect the basic structure of my life.
I make sure that I do not participate, perhaps in any substance abuse. I don’t stumble into remorse, alcohol. I don’t certainly look for a new relationship or a new situation and go write a new test immediately.
I wait for a bit. I’m patient with myself. I give myself the ultimate pause.
Hey, it’s time to reflect on where I am and where I want to go now. I have to, I think, identify at this point my own self-worth, because there is no one like me. There never has been and there never will be, but I must work on me.
And as we alluded to earlier, this is an important experience in my life that I will put into perspective, but I will never forget it. And then, I make a point of writing in my book that every day I’m going to commit some small act of kindness.
And when I do that, I slowly begin to rebuild the integrity that’s associated with me, don’t I? Because as I build away from this cataclysmic event, whatever it is, I can say to myself, now I’m a different person. And there is some thought.
With trauma, which a broken heart of course has to typify, with trauma I’m really afforded an opportunity to go forward or to decline.
And I often think that the homeless situation on the streets in cities like Vancouver or Seattle or Toronto or Chicago, New York, almost two million homeless and semi-homeless people throughout North America, many of those, if they’re not mentally
ill, are suffering from broken hearts, aren’t they? Something has happened that broke their spirit and they were incapable of putting the proverbial cast on their emotions and move on, right?
Because if you don’t do that, you’re never going to recover the dignity of you. And that requires discipline, doesn’t it?
Truly, what did the Stoics say? Five things I must do every day. I must awaken in the morning and have gratitude that I’m alive.
I’ve been given another day. I must immediately realize that the past has been put to sleep. That’s why I make my bed, because I put it away.
Then I realize that my own thoughts are just that. They’re mine, and I can purify them if I want. I can do that through prayer or introspection, whatever it is, cold shower, also quite good.
I commit that act of kindness that we talked about earlier. And finally, I realize that this moment in time is all that is truly real, right? Right now, there is no past, there is no future, there is only now.
So with those kinds of ideas, I begin to rebuild this sort of inner narrative, I guess, that we all have.
Everyone has a story, or at the very least should have a story, that you are a good person, and you’re on your way to some form of spiritual glory with yourself. You’re uncovering your mission. Why am I here?
What’s my mission? What happens when I leave here? I must remember that there’s beauty inside of all of us.
Whatever has happened, whatever horrible event has happened, there’s beauty inside us. I often think of Victor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning.
In one of his instances, he’s walking, I think, in a stone quarry early in the morning, and they’re cold, and they’re filthy, and they don’t have the proper shoes, not enough nutrition, etc., etc.
And he says to himself, I wonder what my wife would think of me now. So I guess he was always quite fussy about his dress and shining his shoes or whatever, and this makes him laugh.
And he tells the man walking beside him, and they both begin to chuckle at this kind of oddity. As an outside observer, you wouldn’t think it was quite funny, but you could see it, couldn’t you, in that sense, right?
I think, ultimately, it shows us that we should use suffering to deepen our perspective, our perception of the world, so to speak, because don’t we realize, as I said earlier, that once you’ve experienced a broken heart, it is like a broken leg.
You can put a cast on it, but the experience is still there. And in theory, this should make us stronger, because we’ve experienced this trauma. I will leave you with this thought.
On a positive note, we can overcome a broken heart, but we will never forget it. Never. And that’s true whether it is philosophical, or financial, or perhaps educational, and finally emotional, from love.
We will overcome these things. For sure. We will push on.
And we must simply give it time. Right? Give it time.
And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is extremely important, especially if you’re going to overcome a broken heart.
And critical thinking is great. Truly great. You take care.
God bless. Bye bye.