What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?

The roots of love grow all around

But for me they come a tumblin’ down.

Every day heartaches grow a little stronger,

I can’t stand this pain much longer!

I walk in shadows,

Searching for light.

Cold and alone,

No comfort in sight.

Hoping and praying for someone who care,

Always moving and goin’ nowhere.

What becomes of the brokenhearted

Who had love that’s now departed?

I know I’ve got to find,

Some kind of peace of mind.

Help me..

Jimmy Ruffin, the older brother of the Temptations lead singer David Ruffin, convinced producers at Motown Records to let him put his heart in the 1966 soul ballad, “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.” The song laments the heartbreak that one experiences after a love that has died (figuratively) by describing the guttural pain it invokes and feelings of regret, recrimination, and reexamination we go through. It reached number 14 on Billboard’s Top 100 and has become an anthem of sorts for those who carry a negative debit when it comes to love and loving others.

We live in a fast-paced society of individual technologies that enable us to connect and disconnect from the world around us rapidly and completely. PDAs of the 1980s and 1990s have given birth to the mobile cellular devices of 2000s that have morphed into today’s smartphones with computing capability nearly powerful enough to launch ships into space to touch the face of God. We can drink pumpkin-spiced lattes and complete large crypto-currency transactions overseas while standing on a subway platform or ascend an escalator to our offices or other places of business for another day participating in the human experience of life.

We have all of the advantages of the modern world our parents merely envisioned but we are lonely, wanting, unhappy beings who have improved our nature at the expense of our nurture. We long to be loved and to love and go to great extremes to engage physical interest in others. Whether through dating apps or specifically engineered meetings, to old-fashioned methods of engaging and attracting the attention (and affection) of another person, we seem to possess an ability to make connections but fail to hold them for purposes of satisfying our need to touch and be touched by others, to feel a warm embrace and say I love you and I need you.

When we experience profound sadness, which comes from unrequited love or a feeling of living a life of quiet desperation, ensorcelled in a world of unlimited pleasure, we do more damage to our self, both our emotional and physical self. The chronic stress of feeling unworthy of love, valueless, un-loveable, can cause you to increase your cortisol levels.

Cortisol is that pit in your stomach feeling that you get when you lose at love’s game that can make you depressed, cause you to over (and under) eat as well as over (and under) sleep. It can increase your chance for becoming diabetic, weaken your immune system and increase your odds of heart disease and heart attacks. This is what becomes of the brokenhearted.

The Greeks describe love in terms of Eros, philia, and agape. Eros is sexual love, the love we give to a partner that produces testosterone, estrogen, oxytocin and other powerful hormones that enhances our connection to others to prolong our lives. Philia is brotherly love, the love we have for our fellow persons (it’s why the city of Phila-delphia is known as the City of Brotherly Love). It is an easy love to attain, it requires not much by way of effort but a willingness to extend yourself to the kindness of another to whom you care deeply for and whose happiness you cherish. It is not to be confused with Eros, as Eros is to sex and relationships as philia is to friendship.

Agape’s love is best described in the bible, in the first book of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, in chapter 13, verses 1–13:

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Love yourself. Let Cupid’s arrows fly as they will and allow your heart to be open to Eros, because we all need to feel the intimacy that comes with loving another. But above all, love yourself. Take care of yourself and let others lift you up when you can barely stand to look at yourself in the mirror and face the demons in your life that make you un-loveable. For:

5 Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning (Psalm 30:5)

Bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things. Our ability to be loved and be in love, in the end, depends on our ability to have philia, and to have agape toward others. It is of course easy to preach and harder to do what need be done to be happy. Believe that those who love you, love you and trust that the sun will rise another day for you to get closer to the physical connection you need to survive in an exceedingly lonely and complex world.

Even when it’s hard sometimes, realize that you have that one person, at least, that you love and who loves you unconditionally in a brotherly or sisterly manner important for us to be able to maintain a connection to humanity. I’m so fortunate that I have that person in my life and I love her more than she can know because she fights for me to know love as she fights to be loved. Go in peace.