How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?

Oooooh baby, if you thought yesterday's song was sad, you might not even want to fire this one up on your computer. There's just something about a man who has lived through having a pan of boiling grits poured on him by his married girlfriend while in the shower -- you can't really escape the mega-emotion with which he imbues his music -- which in this case is a (vastly superior, in my opinion) cover of the original song by the BeeGees.

I knew something tragic had happened to Al Green, but couldn't remember what -- and that's the story Wikipedia has -- it also mentions that after she scalded him, she killed herself, and in her suicide note she wrote: "the more I trust you, the more you let me down." Ouch. Sounds complicated, and really, what affair of the heart isn't, whether it ever goes to extremes as that one did.

So how can you mend a broken heart? Although the simplicity of one youtube viewer's response: "Jesus mends broken hearts every day" is appealing, and for all I know it works for some people, there's more to it than that for me.

I reckon the best way to mend a broken heart and let yourself live again is to let yourself love again. After a period of rest, you don't rehab a muscle by allowing it to continue to atrophy -- you work it. And yeah, it hurts a lot at first. But it gets stronger, and before you know it, you can do and feel mostly like you did before. Might still feel some twinges here and there -- but that's all you have to do (not that it's easy) -- feel them.

I know that for me, when I can let the twinges be a sweet reminder of the magnitude of what was there before and not just what was lost, I'm a whole lot happier, and a whole lot closer to mending a broken heart.