The Ache of Return: Cyclical Time and Loss

Mirabai's poems often circle back, return, ache with repetition. The beloved is absent, then memory brings presence, then absence returns. This is not a weakness but a recognition of how grief actually moves: not in stages but in waves, not toward closure but toward integration. Anticipatory grief for civilization often assumes linear time—decline, collapse, ending. But bhakti wisdom suggests another way: what if we grieve in spirals? What if civilizational forms rise and fall, and what returns is not the same but transformed? What if the task is not to prevent loss but to learn to live through recurring loss? Mirabai returned to Krishna again and again, her longing deepened by each reunion and separation. For those holding anticipatory sorrow, this teaches: do not expect to 'get over' grief for civilization. Instead, learn to move with it seasonally, cyclically, like the returning year. The ache itself becomes a proof of love.