Sunday, December 24, 2017

Taking The Risk To Love

I read a quote by Erica Jong, a portion of it is “Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it.

I can only get back what I am willing to risk. That makes us vulnerable and that scares the hell out of us. So we tend to hold back instead of living wholeheartedly. The fear of being hurt for so many, is too risky, we tried it once or twice and got hurt. Now we dangle our toes in the tepid pool of existing unwilling to jump in with both feet and allow the love that lives in the center of it all to wash over us and surround us in the warm pleasure and security that only love brings. We dance around the edge of the pool watching others who seem to have great love and harbor feelings of jealousy and discontent asking ourselves "why can’t I have that?" The simply answer is "because I am not willing to take the risk".

Instead we live in that "what if" state of mind. We think of all the things that could go wrong blocking any opportunity from true love to get in and things to go right. We’ve been there and gotten hurt there and are unwilling to go there again.  Well I can’t have what I am not willing to open up to. But what if I get hurt again, you say?  Then you get hurt is the answer. We even sabotage our possibilities of having love. We thought we had it once, only to find out it was a façade of the true existence of love. So we stand back and watch the world around us continue to flow, one day into another, one more year of living in fear so afraid to step up and claim what is ours to have for the asking. We may even have had a taste of it and convinced ourselves we didn’t deserve it, “good things are never mine for long, and I’m out of this before someone else has the change to hurt me again”. Love in of itself does not hurt.  Love is gentle and kind it is the ego-human side of us that causes the pain. We make mistakes, we choose wrong, we make more mistakes and say to ourselves, see I knew it wouldn’t work, and I knew I would only end up getting hurt again.

The hurt will heal, the pain will subside, we will recuperate and live another day. Let us take lessons from the mistakes. Let those wounds of past loves show us the way to new loves. Allow ourselves to live fully, wholeheartedly and with great passion. For in the end love is really all there is, the rest we make up out of the fear of living and failing.
This is the season we remind ourselves, to love, to give, to make an effort. Push the fears aside, take the risk, we get one life and it is so worth the living…