Love is unconditionally ephemeral. A snow leopard you happen upon and briefly exchange looks with before it disappears into the snow, leaving you full of awe and gratitude.

There is a figurative story of an old blind man who listened to the story of a miserable young man who was suffering from love:

“My heart aches. I have been stripped of all desire to continue. She meant the world to me, and we were in love. We were even happy. But now, I have never felt so low in my life. I want to curl up in a ball and cry the rest of my years. What has been stripped from me is the only thing that I had ever hoped for. Our bliss was worth everything to me and now it seems shattered.”

“And you are complaining, why?” blurted the blind guy.

“What a heartless response, I am shocked by your lack of sympathy, old man. I am broken, can’t you see? You sit quiet and pensive, and yet you seem unable to hear what I am saying. Have you not learned anything in your years on this earth? Have you no respect for the man who mourns for his loss and heartache? You are bitter and impatient, when all I ask is for mild compassion.” Exclaimed the young man.

“Stop there. You are asking for compassion when you are tasting the depths of passion. How can one offer compassion without having first fully understood passion. Young as you are, you should carefully choose your words, or you risk losing meaning in all that you say.

You should be grateful for being able to live the intensity of passion, a luxury that many will never get a chance to taste. What you are living now, men have gone a lifetime without ever being touched by it. Sorrow, like jealousy, obsession, guilt, melancholy, nostalgia, and others, are meant to accompany the euphoria you have felt. They should taste as sweet to you as the love you first consummated. They are the privileged fruits given to lucky men who are cured from apathy. The indifference that plagues this world, you have escaped it. Your heart has reason to ache when others yearn their quiet lives to suffer if only so that they might feel that reason. You ask for pity, when I see that you need perspective for the life you have.” Said the wise blind man.

Perhaps love is the reason to tolerate suffering in order to live in ecstasy for a fleeting moment.