Thoughts
I wish that I could write as I think I once did. At least I believe I wrote moderately well.
My heart has much to say, but the part of me that put words and phrases together, the brain, does not perform its task quite as fluently these days.
For the most part, since it is my heart that desires to speak, it usually centers on some aspect of love. That feels like an irony for me. I have a very deep sense of love and caring, yet I realize that I often do not let it show by the way I act. Indeed, I realize a selfishness in my love. It is too often, somewhat unconsciously, directed toward my own interests. How I care for others is not diminished, yet because my actions often fall short of adequate expression, I feel I am in fact leaving them alone and uncared for.
These thoughts tumbled from my heart just now as I was reading Maria Popova’s latest post in her newsletter, “Brain Pickings.” The article shared thoughts from poet/philosopher David Whyte about friendship, love and heartbreak. [1] While most of us tend to view these as separate feelings, he brings them together as one pathway in life. Heartbreak seems the most devastating of the three elements. So much pain oozes from it for those immersed in it.
Ms. Popova introduces Whyte’s
thoughts thusly:
“Stripped of the unnecessary negative judgments we impose upon
it, heartbreak is simply a fathometer for the depth of our desire — for a
person, for an accomplishment, for belonging to the world and its various
strata of satisfaction. Whyte captures this elegantly:”
Realizing its inescapable nature, we can see heartbreak
not as the end of the road or the cessation of hope but as the close embrace of
the essence of what we have wanted or are about to lose.
[…]
Heartbreak asks us not to look for an alternative path, because there is no alternative path. It is an introduction to what we love and have loved, an inescapable and often beautiful question, something and someone that has been with us all along, asking us to be ready for the ultimate letting go.
It would seem that to love we are inviting heartbreak, this disappointment and frustration that comes when we feel unfulfilled, when we appear to lose what we once had. How can we reconcile this apparent loss? For me, my experience of loss is considering the “what ifs” of life. What if I had only done this? What if I had not acted this way? What if I had chosen differently? What if I loved regardless of eventual outcomes?
I have not yet answered the questions. I am certain there are possible answers, solutions, ways to act.
What if I could write as I
once did?
