I’m scared of my heart. I’m terrified of where it might lead me. But I’m open to it. I’m learning to trust it. And, as my trust for my heart grows, my trust for my mind seems to weaken, or at least it begins to fade. Heart centered living is what I’m am striving for.
Internal conflict isn’t desirable. It’s not a feeling that many of us actively seek. Whether we like it or not, learning will stem from that conflict. In most cases, the consequences of a “wrong” decision are minimal. In time, we learn that there’s no such thing as a wrong decision. It’s all part of our path, good and bad. We may hold regrets, but these do us no good.
We must learn from our life as we move through it, staying present with an awareness of the past and an intention for the future. It is impossible to live with an intention of love when you convince yourself that your life is devoid of love. We can all benefit from a light at the end of the road from time to time, and the lover’s journey can be a dark one.
But it does not have to be. It can be full of light, full of happiness, full of fun and exploration and adventure, full of flirting and giggling. The chase; there’s nothing like it. But there are so many girls out there. Can one keep it up forever? We are told that we have just one true love, but might we really have many?
One of my greatest fears is missing out on an opportunity for love, the real thing. For a long time, I have avoided women out of a fear of beginning an intimate, energy-intensive relationship that I know, in the back of my mind, will most likely end in heartbreak. I’m young, and I’m not expecting to find the love of my life at this point, but I guess you can never really know when it’ll happen.
This pattern of thinking is an example of how I’ve been conditioned, and it’s how many of us have been conditioned. We are told of love’s importance, and we are given a vision of what love looks like. But we must learn for ourselves what love truly feels like, and what attraction does to the senses. Often, our feelings and intentions do not align with the image of love and marriage that has been burned into our brains. We feel something different from what our brains are telling us we should feel.
We cannot know where our experiences will lead, but we must be willing to experience. That’s the key. And we must be willing to do so with smiles on our faces and love in our hearts. Our motivation to experience cannot rise from a drive to succeed or “get ahead.” It cannot be driven by the need to turn around and boast of our experiences in their aftermath. It cannot stem from a desire to experience more than those around you. It must come from a deeper, more holistic motivation. It must be motivated by the need to feel as much love as possible during our short time here on Earth.
We can never know where love will lead us, but we must be willing to go into the unknown. We must be willing to face our fears in the name of love. We must be willing to take a chance on someone and, in doing so, take a chance on ourselves. We cannot let others push us into situations that we do not choose for ourselves. We must guide our own destiny, and take responsibility for the choices we make, and the roads that those choices lead us down.
Conscious decision-making will help us make healthier, more positively charged choices. But we must be more conscious of our hearts, rather than our minds. Our minds have a devilish way of tricking us into making decisions that are ultimately dangerous or unhealthy for our wellbeing. If we can learn to listen to our heart, and learn to trust our intuition, we will never be led astray. We may still end up in difficult situations, but when our hearts lead us into the deepest and darkest of caves, our hearts will always be able to lead us back to the light. Our hearts will lead us back to the places we are meant to be.
Not all of us will have just one place to call home in our lives. Some of us may have several. Some of us may be instinctively transient, calling the entire planet, or at least their small place in it, home. No matter what your path in life has in store, we can all benefit from bringing more love into the world. That love originates in each and every one of our hearts. It grows there and can be shared with the world from there. Love is the answer to many of our world’s greatest problems.
While we continue to put Band-Aids on the world’s most devastating and heart-wrenching wounds, we neglect the root cause of these wounds. We are hurting ourselves because we do not love ourselves. Love for others begins with a love for the self. This is not a selfish, individualistic love. It is a humble, collectivist love. It is a love for our small place in the infinite reaches of the universe. It is an appreciation of the fact that we live on the only known planet in the universe that supports life, as we know it.
We are incredibly blessed to call this planet our home. But we must begin treating it like home. We all spend great deals of time concerning ourselves about the health of our individual homes or properties, rather than taking time to consider our role in a greater local, regional, national, and global community. It’s time that we step back from our endless habits of buying and selling, working and spending, running and running and running.
We need to slow down, go outside, and simply sit in a place where we’re surrounded by Nature. Take the time to indulge in a book that stimulates your brain and makes you think about the world and your role in it. Set aside time to write about what bothers you, what you love, what you want, what you lack, what you’re good at, and the areas in which you want to improve, in both life and love.
These thoughts are endlessly valuable, and they will help you stay grounded with your purpose and intention throughout life’s journey. It can be easy to get caught in the “rat race.” But everyone should step off the exercise wheel from time to time, take your foot off the gas, climb out of the car, and smell the flowers on the side of the road. Take a walk on your property in the morning. Enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells of the natural world.
We have been born on a planet that is blessed with immense beauty, and our time here is incredibly limited. We must use that time wisely, to experience as much love and beauty as we can, and to live in a way that doesn’t compromise the ability of future generations to enjoy that unimaginable beauty and robust love as well.