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Courage To Love
“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.” — Ursula Le Guin
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“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.” — Ted Hughes
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“Sirs, you must have passion to meet this strange thing called life, and you cannot have passion, intense feeling, if you are mesmerized by society, by custom, if you are entangled in beliefs, dogmas, rituals.” — Krishnamurti
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“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.” — C.S. Lewis
Having the courage to love is indispensable in life. Really loving anything involves pain and loss. That’s why you need courage, because you will be exposed, unprotected from failure and abandonment. You will show who you really are, what you really want. If that self is rejected, it hurts. If you have constructed a fake self to take these blows so you won’t feel pain, your maneuver will kill your joy in living. Delight, beauty and creativity will pass you by.
