about love and fear

Here’s this thing I think might be universally true – when we love something too much, it scares us.

Think of it the way you think of fine china or a collector’s edition whatever-you-will.  Sometimes something is so precious to us that we cannot even interact with it.  We build it up, lock it up, case it in glass – we’re afraid of bringing imperfection to something so perfect. It seems counterintuitive but it’s also very much human nature.  We’d rather let the thing be altogether separate from us.

It’s easy to think about it with things we love but today I was thinking about how I do this with the passions I love, with the dreams I hold so high above me they may as well be made of glass.  Sometimes I love to do something so much that I must force myself to engage with it. 

Am I sounding like a crazy person here?

Today I sat down to write a poem and I just…couldn’t.  And it’s something I LOVE.  I love the way poetry has helped me to shape my interior world and to connect to the exterior one.  I love the way it pulls language out of me that never existed until that moment.   I love the person I become when I’m writing.

But at the same time I’m afraid of it.  I’m afraid that I’ll never write something that will impact the world.  I’m afraid of comparison, afraid that secretly everyone hates the words I produce or that they will mean nothing.  I’m afraid that my efforts to get better at writing are worthless.  I’m afraid to send them anywhere. I’m afraid of rejection.

And so most days it is just easier not to do it, not to write.  It’s easier to tell everyone how much I love poetry and to place it inside a glass box on my dresser and look at it fondly. 

Facing something we love sometimes takes courage.  I think we’ve got to be willing to let the thing we love disappoint us a little, and then to go on loving it just the same.  We’ve got to be ok knowing that interacting with it may make it change, and also that it may make us change, too. 

This year I want to be bolder about writing, to face it with grace and also confidence.  And I want to be bolder about my dreams and my passions and my joys – to pursue them instead of lifting them up to impossible heights.

Are there things you love so much that you cannot touch?  What would it look like for you, if you ran toward the things you loved without fear?