Commitment to Heartbreak

This is something I wrote back in 2010. For some reason it’s much on my mind today so I thought I’d share it again.

You have to make a commitment to heartbreak to do certain things in this life. If you are going to volunteer to reach out your hand, your heart and your soul to those balancing on the edge of a long slide into oblivion you have to know that most will refuse; many won’t hang on hard enough; lots will, once standing on solid ground but still in view of the depths, simply turn around and dive right down; some will get confused and lost and go back to the only place they know well enough to find in the dark; and a very tiny handful will continue to walk the path away from that oblivion with you. If you become hardened to it all you won’t actually be able to do it anymore. If you become broken by it all you won’t actually be able to do it anymore. So…how? How can you make a commitment to heartbreak and not be hardened or broken by it? Well from my experience I only get to keep what I’m willing to give away. I’m not talking about my stuff. I’m no Mother Theresa and get your eyes off my books! I’m talking about my spirit, my heart, my very essence. I have to be willing to expand spiritually beyond my fears, beyond my insecurities, beyond my certainty that there isn’t enough. Because every now and then I look around me and I see these sisters, walking with me, who know what it is to stare down into the depths, who know what it is to want to succumb to that darkness but who, instead, held on and walked away and who in turn have made their own commitment to heartbreak. That is how. Most of us don’t make it, that’s why we do more than most.