Power of Love

Perhaps it is appropriate that the preparation for this piece fell on the heels of a sorrowful event, given that the two sides to the coin of Love are Grief and Attachment. Upon writing this, it was only the previous evening that I learned that someone I knew had died.

As humans, we are quite skilled in loss aversion. It is difficult to accept that we must change or go without even the things that we come to view as undesirable in our lives once they've become a part of our habitual routine, and even harder to say goodbye to those habits and relationships which have always comforted us or shared our history in some way, however big or small.

After my schooling at HOL I ventured off into the world for twelve years and only recently returned as a Post Graduate. It wasn't the first time I've poked my head in to say hello, on numerous occasions even toying with the idea that (given how much I missed the community) I would make a comeback. Up until the Spring term of 2020, there was always a voice in the back of my head that said "Not now." For whatever reason I always felt it just wasn't quite the right time —the fluidity of "Time" itself playing a large part in the power of Love— and continued to watch as year after year passed. Saying goodbye to missed opportunities, yet focusing on a path that has enriched my life in a multitude of ways I never expected that have given me so much to bring home to these halls.

Although I didn't know Polaris quiet as well as others I've befriended recently, I was blessed to cross paths with her on occasion these last handful of months, and the love that everyone who knew her shared was palpable. The relationships she built and efforts she put into completing her full Seven Years here are among the most enriching I've seen, and even from what little time we got to spend together, I could tell she was a powerfully kind, hardworking, and giving spirit.

In October of 2003, when I would have been just at the start of my Third Year, was one of the first times I experienced a grieving like this when we lost Alektaia "Taia" Khalikiope of Hufflepuff. She was my friend, as she likely was to all who knew her. The kind of person who would say things like "Being goofy is kind of a way of life." (thanks to Professor Sollarna Fumbleknot for this quote in her Wizarding Times article from that year). It's been so long since then that much of the memory has faded for me, I'm sad to say, but the impression of who she was in my life has never left. As the saying goes: "People will forget what you say and do, but they'll never forget the way you made them feel."

As I've grown and matured in my short few decades on this planet, one thing I can tell you is that grief changes as you get older. In some ways, you take it better. In many ways, it hits you harder. The loss of Polaris, although I didn't know her as well as I did Taia, was quite a blow for me as I returned home the evening I found out. Walking back from a yoga class, I popped onto mIRC and saw that Prof. Dario Brighton had changed the #hol topic with an "In loving memory of" addition, which led me quickly to the Great Hall where Prof. Kyrie Adderholt's "In Memory Of" post was waiting to fill me in on the appropriate details from the Head Office.

The tears came immediately, so it helped that the next move upon arriving to my destination would be to shower. I felt gratitude that the class I'd just taken was on Heart Opening, and that it left me feeling centered and relaxed, because it was exactly what I needed to tackle that moment head on. The water cleansed me as I continued crying. Not because I was surprised. Only days before I'd seen Taia's name pop up in Prof. Felicia Hartwick's "Hufflepuff Spirit Awards" posting, which reminded me of the ominous feeling I'd been having since I'd been made aware of Polaris's absence earlier in the month when I said to my fiancé that something seemed strange, and I hoped everything was alright.

It can be very challenging to believe that everything is, in fact, "All Right" when things don't entirely feel that way. How can it be alright when things aren't going as planned, or preferred, or in a way that makes any sense? Why do we sometimes lose the parts of our lives that are so precious? I can't answer these questions for you any better than I can answer them for myself, however I will say that I do not grieve the loss of Polaris for Her so much as for we ourselves. I believe that Death, just as Life, must be celebrated. That if you cannot celebrate one, you aren't fully able to accept, appreciate, and celebrate the other. For they are each other's reflection. The cycle of birth, maintenance, and destruction is a miraculous thing that we do not understand, yet I am grateful for each and every breath as it moves through these same cycles. From moment to moment, we are in a perpetual state of living and of dying. Of allowing the past and the future to unite together in what we tell ourselves in Here. What is Now. This present moment is made up of all that has come before us, while magnetized toward all that will ever be.

We cannot make a single decision without the Life which comes from creating, nor the Death which comes from sacrificing all that we have chosen not to do. We cannot embrace the privilege of what we do have without honoring that we wouldn't have the opportunities we DO without those (the lost ones) who came before us, paving the way.

Albus Dumbledore himself, wise creature that he is, said that "To the well-organized mind, Death is but the next great adventure." Because why not?? To the dead, perhaps coming to Life would be as terrifying as coming to Death is to us who believe we are living. Maybe neither experience is really all that different from the other. Who are we to say? These lives are finite and limited for a reason. It is exactly because we are finite and limited that we're able to sift through a very specific, particularly focused set of circumstances, relationships, and experiences. To see things from a point of view we would never have known had we started the entire race at the finish line. Where then is the climb? Where then do we get to explore and learn and grow?

Grief is a beautiful and healthy thing. It's a part of Love, because without Attachment there would be no Grief in our losses. Yet there is such a thing as too much of either, and we can easily fall into the trap of allowing ourselves to become consumed by these energies. The Power of Love is represented by the element of Air and the color Green, and is located exactly where you would expect:

In that circulating area of the pulsing, drum-beating Heart.