most people go through an average part of their young life without understanding the flip side to all they feel is beautiful. when you're little, you don't have any comprehension of the things that can hurt you in life. but it only takes one experience to begin and change the way you view the world; that innocence can disappear in the blink of an eye.
you learn the sun that you find joy in playing in can sunburn you. you learn the pool where you splash away your summers that it can take the lives of others. you learn the beach and its crashing waves has sharks and jellyfish and waves that can destroy. you learn the beautiful roses outside of your house have thorns. you learn that the people you love most in your life have the ability to hurt and betray you in ways you never thought possible.
just because you learn that something has dangers, does that take away the initial beauty of it? if you experience these dangers, should you shut yourself off to something you once got so much enjoyment out of? i wouldn't say you should shut yourself off, but you have to develop some degree of caution that you regard things of beauty with. i really do not believe you can go through life disregarding the dangers in life, but this is not to say your cautions should be so high that they interfere with the way you live your life.
it seems to be a little easier, in general, to define these caution levels in external experiences, like roses and thorns and the sun and sunburns. its when you get to the stripped-down, raw human emotions that things get hard.
i would consider myself a bit of a hopeless romantic - i believe that love is truly a beautiful human emotion, to experience oneself as well as to give to others. but i know, from my own life experience and witnessing those of others that love is also one of the most dangerous things that exists. when you truly love someone, your heart welcomes them into your life and you allow yourself to deeply connect with them...so deep that if that connection is ever broken, you can literally feel your insides ache with an indescribable pain that is inequivalent to anything else you will ever experience in your life.
it only takes a single broken connection to seriously alter your mindset on love as a whole. its so much easier to be overcautious with your heart, to guard it, to put walls up that are nearly impossible to break down...because you don't want to ever experience what you felt again. it feels dangerous, it feels scary...so why subject yourself to that again?
i have to remind myself of this almost every day...not everyone you love is going to leave you. its hard to fight the urge to shut love out of your life for good after you get heartbroken, and its even harder if you experienced this sort of pain more than once. you have to understand that despite your awful experiences, it is not a prediction of all future experiences.
by no means am i an expert at any of this. i've been hurt in the past and it is never a struggle that is far from my mind. but i truly do believe that there is too much beauty in this world that i want to experience to let a danger get in my way. part of what makes love so beautiful to me is the passion that is behind it; passion does not come from an easy path. passion derives from battling and fighting and setbacks and victories and downfalls. it's like my mom used to tell me when i was little: if you fall, get back up, dust yourself off and try again.
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