Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. The stronger the love, the more the pain… Love itself is a pain, you might say, the pain of being truly alive.
— Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

What a profound and unsettling message. It is easy to welcome love when it arrives wrapped in joy — when there is something to celebrate, to be grateful for, or simply to appreciate in the ordinary connections of daily life.

But as Joseph Campbell reminds us, life also contains sorrow at its core. Simply by being alive, we are guaranteed experiences of loss. Those we love will die. We will change, age, and eventually pass away ourselves. These realities bring pain and grief. And if we do not bypass them through denial, numbing, or spiritual slogans, love will sometimes express itself as sadness, tears, and the ache of loss.

The root of the word passion means “to suffer,” and compassion literally means “to suffer with.” This is the love Campbell points toward. Compassion is not sentimental. It is not merely kindness or warmth. It is the willingness of the heart to stay open in the presence of suffering — our own and that of others.

Joy and sorrow are not separate categories of life that alternate like weather. They coexist continuously. If we are even a little awake, we can feel both: the beauty of a morning sky and the grief of loss in the same breath; the sweetness of connection and the awareness of impermanence; the quiet knowledge that, all around the world, people are facing war, hunger, illness, and the simple heartbreak of being human.

To love, then, is to allow all of this in. Love does not avoid sorrow; it embraces it tenderly. Compassion is the courage to be fully alive — to let the heart be touched, even when it hurts.

In that sense, the pain of love is not a mistake or a problem to fix. It is the cost — and the gift — of truly being here.