After Having Everything

One of the most terrible sufferings in human life is this: the person you love doesn't love you back, but loves someone else entirely. There's hardly anyone who hasn't endured this pain.

Every mathematical equation in the world has a solution, every problem finds some resolution, but this cruel equation of life has no answer. The person for whom you stand ready with your entire life in your hands—your life holds no value whatsoever in theirs.

You think: how terribly heartless they are, they don't even look back! But have you ever considered that there are stories behind stories? Just as you're burning to ashes for someone, someone else is burning to ashes for you in exactly the same way.

You wonder: what harm would it do to break the rules just once and love me a little? In precisely the same way, perhaps someone else is thinking about you...what harm would it do to break all the world's rules and be mine?

You're pleading with God in prayer to have someone, while someone else is raising their hands to God, pleading to have you.

At the story's end, none of us gets anyone. We fall in love, we build families, we fulfill our duties—we just never quite manage to love properly.

We find homes, we find people, we even find peace—we just never find the one we love.

Eventually we have everything, yet something desperately precious, something immensely valuable, remains forever out of reach. We never speak of this absence to anyone. It cannot be spoken! Not all the stars in the sky are visible, after all—some stars fade away before they ever truly shine.