Heartbreak

You know that moment when you're standing in the rain, patting your pockets, and realising your keys are gone? That sudden panic, that sick feeling in your stomach? Memories flash through your mind like a cheap rom-com of that last place you and your keys were together - the coffee shop counter, the car door, your desk at work. Just like those lost keys, we replay memories of lost loves and opportunities over and over, wondering where exactly things slipped away from us. Unfortunately for us we can't just ring up a locksmith to fix a broken heart. There's no spare key, no quick solution, no easy way out.

Now, throughout history, philosophers have wrestled with the concept of heartbreak. Heidegger would tell us it's not just some emotional state we're dealing with - it's actually fundamental to our very existence. In "Being and Time", he writes about loss and care in this really fascinating way: "The 'no-longer-being-there' of something is not nothing; rather, it is precisely the possibility that enables all presence... it is the absence that makes presence meaningful." Basically, our capacity to lose something, to feel its absence, is what makes our love for it meaningful in the first place. It's like how you never truly appreciate having your keys to your house until they're gone. The possibility of loss is built into the very structure of caring about anything at all.

But Heidegger goes even deeper. He argues that this awareness of possible loss isn't just something that happens to us occasionally - it's actually the background radiation of our entire existence. In his words: "Anxiety reveals the nothing... we often cannot grasp 'what it was' that made us anxious." Think about that for a moment. That constant, low-level hum of anxiety we feel about losing what we love? That's not a bug in the system, it's our awareness of the fragility of everything we care about. And rather than being something to avoid, it's actually what gives our relationships their depth and intensity.

And then you've got another thinker Soren Kierkegaard, who wrote in "Either/Or" (a title later borrowed by ultimate sad boy Elliott Smith) this passage about the nature of suffering: "What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music... And people crowd around the poet and say to him: 'Sing for us soon again'; that is as much as to say: 'May new sufferings torment your soul.'" Something Kierkegaard is getting at here is that our deepest pains, our heartbreaks, aren't just unfortunate accidents that happen to us. They're actually the very things that make us capable of creating beauty, of understanding others, of becoming fully human. It's like heartbreak isn't just breaking us down - it's breaking us open.

But here's what's really fascinating - we tend to think of heartbreak as something that happens when things go wrong. Like it's some kind of mistake or failure. We think "Oh, if only I'd been more careful, if only I'd made better choices” or “if only I'd protected myself better." But that's missing the point entirely. Heartbreak isn't an a mistake but it’s a essential part of the very fabric of what it means to be human.

Think about it - every single path we might take in life leads to some form of heartbreak. Get married? Your heart will break a thousand times just trying to make it work. Have kids? Say goodbye to all those perfect parental dreams you had. Pour yourself into your work? It'll never be quite enough. Even trying to really know yourself leads to some pretty uncomfortable truths.

Which is why we can start to reframe heartbreak, not as something to be avoided at all costs but more like a compass, pointing us toward what really matters. Because here's the truth - the only things that can break our hearts are the things we truly care about. The depth of our heartbreak is directly proportional to the depth of our love.

We could try to see heartbreak as some catastrophic failure, but as evidence that we've dared to care deeply about something. Not as an ending, but as part of the ongoing conversation we're having with life itself.

That's not weakness. That's not failure. That's courage of the highest order. And it's something we all share, this beautiful, terrible capacity for heartbreak. Just like our lost keys - every time we invest in something, care about something, love something, we're essentially handing over a piece of ourselves, knowing full well it might get lost in the shuffle of life. We do it anyway. We keep giving out these pieces of ourselves, these keys to our hearts, knowing they might end up lost in the rain.

Because in the end, heartbreak isn't just about loss - it's about love. It's about caring so deeply that it hurts. Heidegger would say this is precisely what makes us human - this ability to care so much about something that its absence can shake the foundations of our world. And just as Kierkegaard suggests through the poet, perhaps our heartbreaks are not just wounds to be endured but transformative experiences that shape who we become.

The next time you're standing in the rain, searching your pockets for those missing keys, remember - that sinking feeling, that moment of loss, that's not just inconvenience or bad luck. It's a tiny reminder of what it means to be human, to care, to love, to lose. And maybe, just maybe, that's exactly how it should be.

Because whether it's keys or hearts, what makes the potential for loss so painful is precisely what makes having them so precious in the first place. And isn't that the most beautifully human paradox of all?