Monday 1 August 2011

The wisdom of a broken heart



The journey into love is the biggest adventure possible. It questions everything. It shakes everything. As a guide, it teaches us to meet ourselves. Love is like an inner fire - the more I surrender, the more it shows itself. With gentleness it sees my inabilities and failures. It shows me patiently, with love, what is not love.

When your heart is broken, you find yourself inhabiting a different planet than the rest of humanity, one where tears erupt at the slightest provocation, hours (and hours) can be spent on fantasies of revenge, reprieve, and regret, and every single thing that happens in the course of an ordinary day becomes either a good omen or an awful one in your quest to heal your heart. Waking and sleeping, heartbreak becomes your whole world. Sorrow pierces you to the core, as does joy of others or indeed yourself. You are keenly attuned to the presence or absence of love. Things that used to trouble you are revealed as inconsequential. Any certainty you had about the future is gone and you have to let go of the past.

The paradox is that we need to activate love from our own reserves in order to access it. We have to give it away in order to recognize that we have an endless source inside of ourselves. There is nothing rational or logical about this process. We have to take a leap and trust something beyond our perception – something we cannot see yet.

If we are willing to stretch ourselves, something shifts. Discovering the source of love in this way is inevitably painful to endure, however this kind of hurt does not damage us. Instead, it makes us stronger and more resilient. We have to go through some discomfort, and we have to learn to use painful experiences to grow and expand ourselves.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. - Eleanor Rooseveldt

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