To love someone is to open up your heart . . .

To love someone is to open up your heart and make yourself vulnerable.  In effect, you say to this other person, “Being close to you is so incredibly important to me that I will give you the power to hurt me, because I trust that you will not abuse that power.”

Tragically, though, sometimes even the people we love—the very ones with whom we have been so vulnerable—end up hurting us.  It is at this point that we have a choice to make.  We can either keep loving, keep opening up our heart—or we can withdraw, vowing never to let anyone get that close to us again.

Sigmund Freud theorized that people make choices based on what he called the “pleasure principle.”  That is, we seek out the things that bring us pleasure and do everything possible to avoid the things that cause us pain.  However, on a deeper level, I think the fundamental choice we make is whether we will be open enough to allow both pleasure and pain to enter our lives, or whether we will opt for a life in which we are insulated from ever being hurt.

Admittedly, the idea of never being hurt, or experiencing pain, may strike us as attractive.  But it comes at a steep cost.  If you truly wish never to be hurt, then you must never make yourself vulnerable.  If you never make yourself vulnerable, then it follows that you will never fully open up your heart to another person.  And if you never open up your heart, then you will never experience what it is to love or to be loved!

C.S. Lewis put it like this: “Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable.”

Speaking personally, I would much rather run the risk of having my heart broken—even shattered—than seal it off from the joyful experience of being loved!