.: to love :.

(a quote that has been haunting me for years)
"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even 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, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable." - C.S. Lewis

We just can't do it! It is the impossible feat. We can either risk everything for even the slightest possibility of the greatest thing... or we can remain safe and guarded and unbreakable. All those fears and apprehensions - we are just going to have to learn to live with them, to deal with them as they present themselves, and to push through them into something more magnificant than safety and the promise of ease. We must remain committed to seeking the very best that this temporary life has to offer us, even as we face the strong possibility of some of the worst. For you cannot love someone, nor be loved in return, and at the same time keep your guard up from potentially being wounded by them.

To love is to open yourself up to the possibility of finding both the absolute best and the absolute worst. It truly can go either way... but that's the risk you take to try and experience what very few ever really find: a love that will carry you through an entire lifetime.

"And love is a tired symphony you hum when you're awake... and love is a crying baby mama warned you not to shake... and love's the best sensation hiding in the lion's mane." - Iron & Wine, Lion's Mane