“Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Most of us would agree with Alfred Lord Tennyson. Love is a precious, valuable commodity in a world filled with fear and loathing. Who would deny themselves love just to avoid loss?

Certainly Tsukuru Tazaki would agree. He’s the protagonist of the latest Haruki Murakami novel, Murakami being the Japanese writer with a cult-like following. Tsukuru is portayed as an ordinary man whose most meaningful experience was his relationship with four friends in high school. This little group shared a close bond and did everything together. Unfortunately, the friends rejected Tsukuru during his second year of university and he never found out why. He was so devasted by the loss of his friends that he almost commited suicide. Even 16 years later, when the novel takes place, Tsukuru feels loss. Only through the suggestion of his girlfriend does Tsukuru finally decide to contact his old friends and heal his wounds. What he finds surprises and disappoints him. Clearly though, Tsukuru was profoundly shaped by the love of these friends. He knows what it means to be loved and continues to search for this intensity of relationship again and again. And if he could go back in time he probably would have chosen the friendships despite the pain they caused.

When I entered high school I had a close friend too. Kim and I had been friends since fifth grade and we spent most weekends at one another’s houses. We swam in her pool, watched TV, shopped and attended birthday parties together. Then one day, the first week of high school, Kim dropped me. We were boarding the bus together to go to school and she decided to sit with another girl, Niki. Niki was extremely popular, beautiful and talented. From that day forward Kim cultivated her friendship with Niki and not with me. I felt loss and spent most of my freshman year alone. However, even in my loneliness I knew that if I could go back and change things, I wouldn’t. I would still have chosen my friendship with Kim. I had enjoyed too many things with her and I had learned what a good friendship was like.

So many times we must experience the absence of something to appreciate its existence. The emptiness can be a teacher. After my friendship with Kim ended, I made friends in the middle of my sophmore year with another girl, Tammy, and I was keenly aware of the gift of friendship. I enjoyed much of the same closeness with Tammy as I had with Kim. We liked the same kinds of subjects in school (English and history) and we listened to the same music, even creating a list of our favorite 100 songs. (It’s hard to believe we knew 100 songs.) We took a few classes together and we studied for the SAT together the night before the test. I still remember that fateful night because I locked my keys in my car and had to call AAA for the first time in my life. Upon graduation Tammy and I went to different colleges. I remember feeling hopeful that I could find someone to take Tammy’s place. No one did.  But the emptiness taught me to be grateful. I was grateful for the friendship I had enjoyed and I knew from experience that loneliness would not last forever.

Sometimes love is just for a season of our lives, like my friendship with Kim. Sometimes it is for a lifetime, like the love I have for my family and certain friends like Tammy, who I still see at least once a year. And sometimes what appears as loss is only temporary. Tsukuru finds his friends after 16 years and each reuniting is all the more powerful because of the time that has passed. The most poignant scene comes when Tsukuru travels all the way from Tokyo to rural Finland to track down one of the friends. There, in a quaint village by a lake, Tsukuru learns some important lessons about love, life and loss.

Throughout Murakami’s story about Tsukuru is the question of whether he will stay with his girlfriend, Sara, the person who has urged him to look into his past life. Somewhere along the way we realize that this question is not as important as the fact that Sara has changed Tsukuru’s trajectory forerver. Without her nudging, he wouldn’t have tried to resolve his past. And this is what we can say about love: It changes us like no other force can. Whether it be temporary or lasting, love is never really a loss. Our friends influence us, change us and inspire us. We are more human and more ourselves because of love.