I know the heartbreaks that sometimes alight on you when you least expect them. Expected or not, they hurt. But even when you feel your heart is breaking, you do know that troubles melt away, and that, relatively speaking, your worst trouble is always the present one. Even in the moment of heartache, you know that your seeming cause isn’t really all that bad. You’ve had as bad or worse, and you know that there are many in the world who would be glad to have your troubles. Maybe what hurts your heart isn’t worthy of all the attention and woe you pour on it.

Yes, it is easy to say that it doesn’t matter all that much. It’s easy to say the heartache you feel will go away.

I am sorry for any pain you feel. I am sorry that too often the pain seems to come from those you love the most. I am sorry that you feel heartache at all. I do not make light of it, beloveds, yet I must tell you that you are the cause of your own suffering.

Will you shake your sense of woe off? Will you admit that you don’t have to keep the hurtful feelings rolling around inside you? Can you not let go of the hurt feelings now? Hurt feelings are called hard feelings, and they are hard to bear. I would love you to dispense with them. Unless heartache is dear to you, let it go. This is already another moment.

When you carry a suitcase, and it gets too heavy, you put it down. Will you treat troubles in the same way?

When you have a full trash bag, you tie it nicely and put it in a barrel or out at the side of the road. Can you not do that with your heartaches as well? Please do not keep heartache to you.

When it rains, you know it stops. You do not have to anguish over the rain. You didn’t want the rain, yet it rained. So now dry yourself off. Getting wet isn’t the end of the world, nor are your heartaches. And your heartaches are not the end of your happiness. You will know happiness again. When your heart is breaking, you think that heartache is the theme of life when, all the while, happiness is.

I gave you a dowry of happiness. I did not pack a bag of grief for you.

What if this recent unhappy thing that happened is actually a good thing? What if you heard something you needed to hear? You didn’t want to hear it, yet, right or wrong, it could still be something good for you to hear. At the very least, it puts you now at a stepping-off place. Turning a corner is not a bad thing. A deep change in your perception may be hard for you, yet it can still be good.

You are finding out the mettle you are made of. You are made of stronger stuff than you knew. Your backbone is straightened. When you let go of your sense of dismalness, you will know you have climbed a mountain. You were in the valley. Now you can climb another mountain and rise to a higher peak from where you can see further and more clearly.

You are really all right. Your feelings matter to you very much, of course, but the extent to which you let your feelings matter may not be necessary. Holding feelings that damage you or another certainly isn’t what you want.

Often in life, the thing to do is to simply shrug your shoulders and keep on walking along.