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Let The More Loving One Be Me
A poem by W.H. Auden
Every time I open up Brain Pickings, I see this pop up:
from “The More Loving One” by W.H. Auden
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
I didn’t quite understand it at first glance but after reading it many times, the message finally sunk into me. It is this simple: “Let the more loving one be me.”
What if the love we gave was not reciprocated? What if we are the more passionate ones? What if I had to give more in a relationship? What if affection cannot be reduced to numbers and measurements, and will never be made equal? Then, can the more loving one be me?
Like stars burning passionately in the night sky that we cannot return just the same, do the stars at night stop burning just because we stop loving? They do not and therefore, can I not love and burn just as brightly as the stars in the sky and be the more loving one?
I have been trying to cultivate a sense of compassion from within. I am an angry person, there are…
