Shadow Life - Anais Nin

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world,
and you believe you are living.  Then you read a
book... or take a trip... and you discover that you
are not living, that you are hibernating.  The symptoms
of hibernating are easily detectable: first restlessness.
The second symptom (when hibernating becomes
dangerous and might degenerate into death):
absence of pleasure.  That is all.  It appears like an
innocuous illness.  Monotony, boredom, death.
Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing
it.  They work in offices.  They drive a car.  They picnic
with their families.  They raise children.  And then some
shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song,
and it awakens them and saves them from death.
Some never awaken...

Anais Nin

The Hard Kind of Love...

“Love never dies a natural death.
It dies because we don’t know how
to replenish its source.

It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals.
It dies of illness and wounds;
it dies of weariness,
or witherings,
or tarnishings.”

Anais Nin

 

This may seem like an odd quote to post on the global day for celebrating “love.”  But when I read it a week or so ago on Love Is A Place it struck me as being true in so many ways – not just about romantic love, but in our day to day relationships with lovers, spouses, partners and companions; our dysfunctional families who are hard to love, friendships that die because of betrayal or wounds; or when the love for life within dies when we grow tired of the pain of life and living; when despair comes to visit and platitudes of love no longer “work” to soothe the weary heart.  We need to find a way to nourish Love – not being quick to correct and criticize, but eager to empathize and encourage – to hold the Heart open – as hard as that is.  We need to find Love’s Source and bathe in it to know the enduring kind of love that sustains – that understands the weariness, the witherings and tarnishings of love over time, embracing them.  It’s a hard kind of love that willingly leans into life when it doesn’t turn out as we planned, that willingly lets go of betrayals, and errors, and wounds; that willingly stands in the face of hatred - unmoved.  I am not good at this kind of love…   It’s the hard kind of love that no one tells you that you will need for the journey of Love.  It must be discovered, and rediscovered, as it calls us to open our hearts again and again and again – to Love…

Photo: a heart shaped stone
laid in an old weathered wound of a tree…

Do you see that incredible weathered face there?