Even if we try to deny and fool the world by pretending someone, something, or our own hearts don’t matter…we are all hurt. I suppose the real tell is how we handle hurt. Each of us do differently…some of us hide, others try to pretend it didn’t happen, and some of us get tired of hurting and grow cold. But a simple rule of life…we all feel it even if we don’t admit it.
In my life, much like most, pain has come in different ways, some from family, some from friends, others from special people (past dating relationships for me, if I am honest) I have invested my heart and life with and watched, up to this point in my life, each of them come to a close. Transparency…there was a time that a love relationship cost me more than I ever realized. It was a situation that ended painfully and existed the same for some time.
It’s in moments like that when we have given all, bled for something or someone, that we have a choice…sometimes we make it consciously and other times its subtle. I like most have loved and lost, both friends and significant others. For me it is often the place of solitude that brings clarity, or in some cases brings a recalibration to what you thought you once saw clearly.
Clarity. There was a move in my heart, subtle as it was, that I chose to let take hold, take root. Not one of anger and hatred but one that simply placed a ‘Do Not Enter’ sign over places in my heart. Not just for others to see but for myself to read loud and clear if I ever chose to venture to a moment or time in which I considered re-opening the door of true intimacy once again.
The tool of choice for shutting that door…Fear. Fear that pain could come and cost my heart everything once again and forfeit my calling. But a heart shrouded in fear is one bound and crippled left to not be adventured and exercised. If we have ever left something alone for years…we know what happens…those things begin to rot, decay, and become useless.
Truthfully, there have been years I have spent denying my heart the ability to care, not so much about family and friends, but denying my heart the ability to journey toward the most intimate relationship imaginable…Marriage.
Solitude can breed life since it brings the truest since of clarity. However that clarity is not always clarifying, for me it brings into focus the blurred moments of what I once thought to be perfect vision.
Why the fear and clarity on love convo today? The last couple weeks, since returning from Cambodia, there has been a more than normal amount of solitude for me. My schedule has slowed a bit, some relationships have changed and brought much time to reflect and seek clarity.
In the ever pressing need for transparency today I feel the need to share that hiding, denying and shrouding a heart with a extinction breeding sign that screams ‘Do Not Enter’ truthfully only brings one possibility for our hearts and lives with others…none.
Time to take some risks.
-Shane
live//PC
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