“Tell me, Legolas, why did I come on this Quest? Little did I know where the chief peril lay! Truly Elrond spoke, saying that we could not foresee what we might meet upon our road. Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would have never come, had I known the danger of light and joy.”
Legolas responds with a reflection about the relationship between love and loss:
"Alas for us all! And for all that walk the world in these after-days. For such is the way of it: to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream. But I count you blessed, Gimli son of Glóin: for your loss you suffer of your own free will, and you might have chosen otherwise."
Such is the pathos of life, the "danger of light and joy." To find is to lose, such is the way of it. The price of love is grief and sorrow.
The alternative, as Brené Brown points out, is numbness. Withdrawing your heart from life and love. Choosing protection and emotional armor over risk and vulnerability.
This is one of the reasons I'm a Christian: The cross.
Love and loss sit at the very center of our lives.
