Journal Entry 9.17.23
I feel like I live my life on the face of a cliff, my fingers fatigued and bloodied. Always having to be incredibly brave. Always having to hold on with no ropes to support me. Always having to stare straight into the eyes of failure and collapse. I have no safety harness, no climbing partner. If I don’t hold on, then my death is my own fault. It is an exhausting way to live.
I am trying to learn to see the invisible ropes that are there. I am trying to learn how to see safety and connection in others, but it is a stretch for me. It is easier to trust only in myself rather that to trust that my partners in life are ensuring the ropes are in good condition, that their attention won’t wander, that I won’t be let down again. Again. Again. Again.
I am trying to learn that life is far more uncertain than we choose to believe and so my appreciating the impermanence of life is not fatalism, it is seeing the fragility that most of us choose not to see, most of us willfully ignoring that accidents happen, and that there are no guarantees in life. I am trying to learn that I cannot hold love in a strangle hold, that I cannot own or legislate it. That to love is to risk loss. My father’s favorite quote after my mother’s death was this one:
‘Tis a Fearful Thing
‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing
to love.
For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.”
― Yehuda HaLevi
It is a fearful thing to love when you risk losing love. I am not sure there is anything more scary or that requires more bravery than to love without ownership. Broken hearts cause physical pain. They force us to face death. They make us doubt and question our very value. And yet to live without risking love is to die little deaths every day. To love is so fundamentally human, and one of the most elevated and vulnerable states of being human that to hide and protect our hearts is to hide and protect ourselves from being human. I have many divorced friends who won’t risk love. I cannot not risk love even though I know that it carries with it inherent grief and loss.