To have loved and lost

[Zombie PotatoHeads]

It's better to have loved and lost.
Much better.

[Phenia]

I rather be a loser than lose to love.

When you put it like that, it doesn't sound like a choice.

[Minnas]

I rather be a loser than lose to love.

When you put it like that, it doesn't sound like a choice.

It's my choice. What do you chose?

[Phenia]

I rather be a loser than lose to love.

When you put it like that, it doesn't sound like a choice.

It's my choice. What do you chose?

I mean to say it doesn't sound like a choice between two different things. A loser is a loser is a loser, after all.

[Greed and Death]

If losing a loved one drives someone mad they are weak and should be put down.

it is better to love and lose because at the minimum you get an excuse to drink.

[The Naacal]

If losing a loved one drives someone mad they are weak and should be put down.

it is better to love and lose because at the minimum you get an excuse to drink.

Agree with you on the drinking part, as far as putting people down that's a bit much. Then again a lot of people who go that nuts commit suicide. The crappy thing is when they take others with them.

[Pope Joan]

I agree with the quote.

it is better to risk loss and thereby experience life, that to moulder in safe inertia.

[Peach marmalade]

i believe that taking that risk and loving, even if it ends sooner than you wished it had, is better than never knowing.

[Sehvekah]

It's entirely dependant upon the person experiencing it. Having loved and lost(due entirely to my own incompitance, no less), I can say that, for me, it was truely better to have had what I did for as long as it lasted. Yes, it hurt to lose her, hell still hurts now if I dwell too much on what I did. But those three years.... If I live to be 150 without ever loving anyone else, I can still die a happy man for what we had in that brief time together. If I were to have died without ever having experienced that, well how can you call it death if there was no life there to begin with?

That said, there's so many documented cases where someone loved, lost and went completely fucking batshit insane, leaving a trail of death, destruction or both behind them that, well, some people clearly would have been better off having never "lived"*.

The shitty thing is, there's really no way to tell for certian if you or someone else would be better off untill after it happens, and life doesn't come with a working reset button or save points. Which really fucks shit up for the rest of us.

*=to my definition of the word, at least.

[Farnhamia]

A poet or writer once said that "It is better to have loved, and lost, than to have never loved at all." For the purpose of this thread, I will assume he was talking about romantic love.

Now, I disagree with that quote, on the basis that having loved and lost, for example, losing a lover to Death, a person will go over the edge and do crazy, perhaps heinous, things to avenge the loss, or something to that effect, or go to the other end and commit suicide.

I base this on what I have seen in the "new" Batman movie, "The Dark Knight."
Here's the Wiki link for those who want to know what I'm talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dark_knight#Plot
Movie Plot Wikipedia Highlights:

...At the police station, Batman interrogates the Joker, who reveals that Dent and Dawes' police escorts were on Maroni's payroll and have placed them in warehouses rigged with explosives on opposite sides of the city — far enough apart so that Batman cannot save them both. Batman leaves to save Dawes, while Gordon and the police head after Dent. With the aid of a smuggled bomb, the Joker escapes police custody with Lau. Batman arrives, but finds Dent instead of Dawes. Batman successfully saves Dent, but the ensuing explosion disfigures Dent's face. Gordon arrives at Dawes' location too late, and she perishes when the bomb detonates....

...The Joker goes to the evacuated hospital, disguised as a nurse, and frees Dent from his restraints, convincing him to exact revenge on the people responsible for Dawes' death, as well as Batman and Gordon for not saving her. Dent begins by flipping for the Joker's life, and spares him....

...When Batman refuses to kill the Joker, the Joker acknowledges that Batman is truly incorruptible, but that Dent was not, and that he has unleashed Dent upon the city. Leaving the Joker for the SWAT team, Batman searches for Dent. At the remains of the building where Dawes died, Batman finds Dent holding Gordon and his family at gunpoint. Dent judges the innocence of Batman, himself, and Gordon's son through three coin tosses. As the result of the first two flips, he shoots Batman in the abdomen and spares himself....

Knowing myself, I feel it best to never love at all, because if I love, and my SO leaves me, either through break up or death, I fear I may never recover.

What say you, NSG?

Please explain your answers.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, in the 27th Canto of his "In Memoriam AHH":

I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

Your assumption that Tennyson was offering consolation on the loss of a romantic relationship is incorrect. The AHH of the title is Arthur Henry Hallam, a great friend of Tennyson's who died very suddenly when young. Tennyson worked on the poem for 17 years before publishing it, and in no particular order.

You may take it as referring to romantic love, however, as the sentiment does fit. The poet says he does not envy that which thinks itself blessed, the heart that has never given itself to another but stagnates. After all, love bites. It is not a gentle emotion, but it is not an emotion you should avoid or deny, because no matter how sharp love's teeth, the wonder it brings it worth every second of whatever pain may follow (which is not an absolute given, either).

Take it this way, that the greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and to be loved in return.

[Querinos]

Knowing myself, I feel it best to never love at all, because if I love, and my SO leaves me, either through break up or death, I fear I may never recover.

What say you, NSG?

Please explain your answers.

Quit being a coward. "All human life is suffering."- Siddhartha Gautama.
It is a painful and miserable existance, but if you hide from it you're not really living. As far as anyone knows for sure you only get this life. One needs to feel those emotions to know the differance between moving on and never moving at all.

Take chances; sure you will get hurt, but you will come back stronger and more aware of yourself. Then when the time comes with someone(s) you will know what is real and important. It is like Quagmire put it "So long as you keep rolling you will eventually find that special someone that makes you whole."

But, all this is moot. As someone has already broken your heart; otherwise you wouldn't have reteated in such a way.

[Ryadn]

better to HAVE loved and lost.
because it will eventually go away, and a relationship with someone you love less/like will definitely ease the pain.
i was madly in love with a girl i met in Germany in March 07, like i was really planning to run off to the airport and fly over there and tell her i love her. every thing i wrote from then on became about her and if i had to make a design, it'd form her initials somehow. from March on, i was in a deep spiral of depression, but then in June, i met this wonderful girl and began to love her. i went out with the girl from my town about three times and now, i don't really love the girl from Germany as much as i did.

and once you have loved, and lost, you will know the great feeling of love and will be able to recognise it again when it comes and try and keep it.

If you never actually tried to see her again, and three months later you went out with someone new and it lessened your love, I think it fair to say what you felt for this girl in Germany was not really love--or, if it was, then it was love as deeply as you could feel it at the time, which certainly changes over the course of your life.

[Mereshka]

As with most people here apparently, I agree with the quote, mostly on the premise that life is short, and if you don't take chances, it will be a very empty life.

[Grave_n_idle]

It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.

Even looking back at loves I've had, and lost - I don't regret a one. But I could certainly imagine how someone could look back over a loveless life, and regret their choice.

[Pepe Dominguez]

Is it better to lose your love, or be a loveless loser?

Answer that one.

I thought by phrasing the question like that I was subtly illustrating what my answer is.

Calling anyone a "loser" is really unhelpful.

[Pepe Dominguez]

If losing a loved one drives someone mad they are weak and should be put down.

it is better to love and lose because at the minimum you get an excuse to drink.

If you can't cope with reality without alcohol, maybe it's you who ought to be "put down." It's no less a weakness than abstaining from close relationships on the basis of avoiding the pain of failure/betrayal/whatever else.

[Kyronea]

Every time I read that strip, I hear the computer's voice as GLaDOS...

Shame on you. That's the computer from War Games.