One of the greatest things I ever heard was Christopher\’s explanation of love:
Love is holding open your chest to let another person hold your heart, trusting they won\’t squeeze so hard to crush it and hurt you.
I won\’t tell you how mad I was at his brilliance when he first said it, but I am sure you can guess. The insight, right??I\’ve met people who said things that resonated with me but this one right here, and I have paraphrased it to this … what he said was just as succinct as I remember, even though I no longer have the exact quote … but this! I have never forgotten.Letting someone into your heart is no light thing to do. Especially if you\’ve been hurt in one way or another. Being hurt makes for trust issues, no matter how centered you think you are.I like to think I have a steel vault for a heart: I\’ve been hurt beyond measure in some ways over the years and yet I try to let people in. I\’ve realized that I close off, opening only for those who\’ve earned my trust; the door closes behind them again, meaning if I get hurt, it\’s like a detonation and the vault is crushed in the frenzy of anguish.The thing that got me the most about Christopher\’s description of love was the squeezing part: no matter how much we love someone, inadvertently they may hurt us a little. An action or maybe something said or written could bruise the heart, dent the love a bit for a minute. However, the truth of real, honest, full love is that it will never squeeze so hard to crush.Steel is difficult to crush, but it can dent still. I don\’t want to feel that either anymore, just the gentle pressure of my heart being held by one who knows its value and treasures it.Yeah, that.
I really like that gentle pressure metaphor. We do give our heart to others and trust that they will take good care of it, even if there are the odd accidental bumps and bruises along the way, if they truly love us then they have our best interests and wouldn’t do anything deliberate to hurt us. I sometimes want to shut down when others betray my trust but then I have to open up again by acknowledging that there are people that are going to hurt me and I’m just going to have to accept it, cut them out of my life and move on. Knowing the true value of hearts and minds that are focused on us and how we personally focus on them to appreciate them are the important lessons we can teach anyone 🙂
Yes … this! <3