To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.

Having loved someone and lost them can feel like the worst possible outcome while it is happening. Measured against a life in which you never risked caring at all, though, it ranks higher, because the love itself was real and shaped you whatever came after. The loss hurts in proportion to what was there, and what was there counts.

If you are in the losing part now, none of this is meant to hurry your grief. It may simply help, on some later day, to remember that the ending did not cancel what you had. The loving happened, and it remains yours.