This quote from C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves has been running through my mind a lot lately:
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be 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, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
I completely agree. Opening your heart to love anything is dangerous and automatically brings the risk of being broken, but that’s the only way to reach the heights of love. The idea applies to more than just love, too — without taking risks, we can’t excel in creativity, business, etc.
Throw in your two cents