Love, Pain, & Dinner

Sometimes people come into our lives and bring us tremendous kindness, love and safety. 

These humans leave such a profound impact on us. They teach us. They protect us. They provide for us. 

Like all things in life, these people can’t stay with us forever. When it’s time to leave, our hearts ache with feelings of helplessness that swallow us whole.

Sometimes the pain is so unbearable that we make a decision to never allow ourselves to feel this much love for another person again.

We fortify our hearts from the rest of the world and close ourselves off.

But we can also choose to stay open.

We breathe. We sit with the pain. We go all the way through, our entire body shaking in fear. Our eyes are full of tears, but we keep them open.

We choose to find a way, some miraculous way, to keep our hearts open to the world.

We choose to love, to explore and wonder, even knowing that we will once again feel pain.

Because maybe pain is simply the bill at the end of an amazing meal. Maybe it’s just proof that we experienced something marvelous and rare.

And instead of focusing on how much it cost, we can remember how delicious each plate tasted. We can remember how beautiful our beloveds looked, how much we laughed and how deeply we shared stories with one another.