You are Here to Risk your Heart

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” ― Louise Erdrich


On September 12, 2013, I saw this quote and I wanted to blog about it. It's been saved in my drafts since then sitting, waiting.  I write about what I know.  As I've said hundreds of times, it's about discovery; it's my process to gain an understanding.  As beautiful as this passage was, as much as I believed in its message, I couldn't relate to it.  It's like watching a hockey game.  You can cheer for your team at the top of your lungs -- "More cowbell!!" -- and you can share the excitement and the exhilaration of the win, but let's face it, the victory goes to the team.  Cheering from the sidelines is NOT the same as throwing on the equipment, giving everything you have and risking a loss in pursuit of the win.   Victory is for the brave.  I wasn't brave.  Not then.  Not until very recently in fact.

My friend Alison encouraged me to start trying -- to open my heart.  She said I was waiting, sleeping, resting.  I wasn't trying.    In fact, a few months ago, our sisterhood group had a tarot reading and my cards said that "he" was coming.  That he would find me. My first thought was that I was going to date a UPS guy because, let's face it, I don't get asked on dates.  People don't stop in here unless they're lost and looking for directions.  The ONLY guy who stopped by the cottage to "chat me up" was a 70-year old man with a belly full of beer and a bad pickup line.

I'm intimidating, I've been told.  I'm 5'9 and I don't slouch.  I am not a petite woman - Amazonian I joke.  My friend Anna-Lisa tells me I should stop looking for a man, because what I need is a warrior.

And then...he appeared.

I'm not going to lie.  I was prepared for a spectacular fail.  Actually that's not true -- I thought I was going to walk away with a new friend.  Maybe someone I could fix up with one of my single gal pals. Finding good people is never a fail and all my instincts told me he was "good people." I was raised as a tomboy and many of those traits have held over into my adult life.  Grabbing a couple of beer and "shooting the crap" is a good night by my standards.  It was a beautiful day.  Unseasonably warm.  A great day to kick back and sip some cold beer on a hot deck and enjoy some adult conversation.  How do you go wrong with a plan like that?  You don't.  Nobody loses.  Everybody wins!  It's a flawless plan!

I have a lot of rules.  This guy breaks a bunch of them.  My friend Shelley thinks that my rules are effectively in place to rule out 98% of earth's male populous.  She lives balls-out and I admire her for it. She thrives in stormy seas whereas I prefer lakes of glass...under clear blue skies...with a life vest. I always looked at my rules as the life vest but as I write this,  I realize they were my anchor.  They weren't saving me...they were stopping me.

"The Four Agreements" cautions us against making assumptions.  I had them.  Assumptions I mean.  In my defense, this fellow isn't a perfect stranger to me so...there they were...preconceived ideas.

He shattered each of them. One at a time.  Until all the little pieces lay at my feet.  Sparkling in the last few rays of a September sun.

It was profound.