The Heart Chakra

I've said goodbye to a lot of people. Many have left this world. Many have never said goodbye and still exist, somewhere, living their lives. People have passed through my life, weaving strings like a tapestry of memories, good and bad. Some I came close to. Others I pushed away. Some, I never knew as much as I wanted to about them. Some people simply sat in the same classroom with me, and heard the same lecture or read the same novel. Each person I have seen, heard and become friends with has impacted my life in ways I may never know.
I took a class on grief, and wrote an essay on it, but I still don't think that grief just mysteriously disappears one day. Because people have been in your life, you think of them. Especially when you see someone who reminds you of them, hear a song you used to sing together, or be reminded of a time that you were closer to them than you are now. I guess this is the power of the heart.
In Kingdom Hearts, Leon tells Sora, "We may never meet again, but we'll never forget each other." The heart and mind record people in your life and you see them in others from time to time, or you remember something about them at random. 
In Avatar the Last Airbender, Guru Pathik tells Aang, "The Heart Chakra deals with love and is blocked by grief." After Aang lays all his grief in front of him, Guru Pathik says, "You have indeed felt a great loss, but love is a form of energy, and it swirls all around us. The Air nomads love for you has not left this world. It is still inside of your heart, and is reborn as new love."
 Grief may not be the same as remembering someone, or smiling at an old joke, but there is a familiar pang of loneliness when you realize that someone is gone, or things will never be the same.
They may not even be gone physically, but they are just not the same person you once knew. People and life are constantly changing, but in many ways, they stay the same. They fall on old habits, whether good or bad, and go through transformation after transformation. And because no one lives the same life, everyone approaches life differently.
Life is a powerful thing, but I think it's okay to remember someone every once in a while. You may discover something new, just from remembering the past under a new perspective.

Yuna says this best:

“I guess everyone’s like this. We cling to our secrets, our doubts, our memories…We’re never able to put them aside. Even though they confuse us, there are some things we can only find in that confusion. I think…it’s okay to feel that way.”

—	Yuna, Final Fantasy X-2