Tag: feelings

Love is Still the Answer

If it’s one thing that will never cease to amaze me, it’s how much hurt people can experience and still be able to dare to love afterward.

We all go through so much with our hearts in our hands, outstretched and vulnerable. Sometimes we experience that heart to meet another one, and they wrap themselves in each other. It can last for a few minutes, weeks, months, or maybe even years.

Other times, that vulnerable heart takes a leap of faith out of your hands, headed straight for the ground with no one to break the fall, just you to pick up the pieces.

Our hearts they bleed, and they scar. They wrap themselves in layers of protection, but somehow they always find a way to strip the layers, sooner or later. Sometimes they need a little help to get those layers off, other times, it’s just self-love that removes those layers, one by one.

Isn’t it amazing how most of us choose to go back to love over and over again, no matter how badly it hurt the last time around? One can sometimes wonder if that makes us the most stupid species of all, or the most wonderful. I choose to see us as wonderful.

For if we don’t choose love to guide us, what does that make us? If the experiences and pain of our past would make us unable to love another, how wasted wouldn’t our lives be?

But the way that we trust and love, it changes. The way we love when we are young and naive is not the same way as we love when we are older and more experienced. I’m not sure that this is a change for the better. I guess it depends on the situation.

I sometimes long for the naive kind of love that I could experience as an early teen before I knew what real heartbreak felt like. Before I learned to fear a possible outcome before I even allow myself to fall. But there’s also a beauty in all the pain one has gone through. The way I’ve learned to pick myself up again, to set boundaries, to love myself enough to say no and to see the love of friends and family to be the purest love of all.

I don’t think I would like to love naively in the world of modern dating. I’m pretty sure that would set me up for disaster. But I do hope that no matter how far away from love I feel like I’m drifting, I will always find my way back to it. That I will always allow myself to trust love again, no matter how much it scares me. And that I won’t be blinded by the layers of past events, so much so that I won’t be able to see new and real love if it crosses my path.

We, humans, are extraordinary in the way that we love when it’s done without games or hidden agendas. When it’s real, pure, and raw. When it’s done from a place of not being able to choose anything other. When we love enough to want the other person happy, no matter if that takes them away from us. When it’s kind and giving. When it’s just love❤️

Love is Still the Answer❤️

This post was inspired by one of my favorite songs from Jason Mraz’s latest album. It’s a song that has brought tears, smiles and moments of me singing out loud and dancing around, hugging myself in my living room❤️

Goosebumps, Smiles, and Tears

A couple of months back, my mom invited me to go to a concert with her, my stepdad and my little brother. I had very little knowledge about the singer other than having seen a broadcast of a Christmas concert he did last year. I did however already know that I loved his voice and that it was my kind of music. And let’s face it, I’m a sucker for a good voice and nice lyrics that has a nice hat attached to its owner!

Those who know me are very aware of how emotional I can be. I get very easily moved by music, movies, people, moments, memories, sights, you name it. And there’s something so powerful about being present at a good concert. The music, the voices, and the atmosphere (if right) gives me goosebumps, makes me smile, and even makes me cry. Sometimes all three happen at the same time. It is a very emotional, but truly wonderful experience because it is so raw. I have absolutely no control over it, and it is moments like that where I am so incredibly present! It feels like everything else just disappears.

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Adam Douglas and his band made exactly that happen yesterday, and I’m so grateful for the experience. So grateful that I feel so much, that I get so easily moved, and that music makes me so mindful and present.

Thank you to Adam Douglas, his wonderful band, and (of course) my mom for a wonderful Saturday night, for all the goosebumps, the smiles, and the tears❤

What I Have Learned From Pain

A lot of people have a very strong fear of the feeling of psychological pain, and that is completely understandable. Other have a craving for it. I wouldn’t say that I fall into either of the two categories.

I don’t particularly enjoy the hurt, but whenever I come across it, I choose to be very mindful of the pain. It’s not the same as wallowing in it, or making it into a bigger deal than it is. It is about being open to the lessons that are there to be learned because of the pain. It’s about daring to say: You know what, I’m not okay, but that’s okay too!

In a lecture by Alan Watts, he talks about how there is no wrong way to feel because feelings are something that comes to you, and that happens (very often) without your ability to control it in that very moment. You can control how you choose to act on it, and thereby shift your path into new ones that will come with other emotions, but what you are feeling is a 100% true to you. I really like that way of thinking, and I believe that kind of mindset is a way to be very mindful of your emotions.

Don’t shut them out. Don’t hide them. And don’t be embarrassed by them. Meet them at the door and instead of telling them to leave, ask them why they have come. Ask them what they can teach you, and how you can grow from it ❤️

That is what I have learned from my painful experiences; that no matter how much it hurts or how hopeless everything feels in the midst of it all, I always come out on the other side as a stronger and more aware person. Through all of the experiences, all of the emotions (good and bad) and all the people I meet, that is the way that I grow. And if there’s one thing that I will always strive for, it is to continuously grow for as long as I get to wander this earth❤️

On the Mend ● POEM

All around was chaos

She searched but could not find

The feelings she remembered

The quiet in her mind

☼

Lost in streets familiar

Places she should know

Now there’s only strangers

In places she won’t go

☼

Curled up in the lonely

She tries to find her way

Wishing for a guiding sign

Back to a brighter day

☼

Tiny whispers in the dark

Said this is not the end

You are not forever lost

But you are on the mend

●

©Christina de Vries

 

Underneath by Christina de Vries – POEM

Under a blue umbrella

Someone clearly missed

Beneath the sunny skies

Memories of one kissed

Behind the smile

All that’s left behind

Hidden in a lost face

Might be happiness to find

He looked and thought it obvious

By seeing, he just knew

Feelings can be easily disguised

Especially the true

***

©Christina de Vries – Geek Heaven

Picture from The Blue Umbrella by Pixar.
Picture from The Blue Umbrella by Pixar