Why your heart breaks
Of course my heart still breaks.
Perhaps the biggest lesson in acceptance is seeing others in pain and not being able to change it for them.
We all have our own reckoning with powerlessness. With recognizing that we’re human. With acknowledging that the only thing we can control is ourselves.
Knowing this doesn’t make it easy. But it does simplify the process of getting from “I wish” to “I will.”
I WILL trust that they can do it. I will trust that this is a journey they need to complete. I will accept that while I can walk alongside them, I can’t walk it for them.
As a coach, as a friend, as a partner, as a parent, we all have moments where we can see what the “problem” is and how to best solve it. It seems especially easy when it comes to those we love. The urge to take over and fix is sometimes so great it can feel like a seven nation army couldn’t hold us back (thank you Jack and Meg white, for a baseline we’ll never forget).
Some things aren’t broken.
Some things can’t be fixed.
It’s up to you to recognize which it is. And which it isn’t.
What you believe is what will be true, for you.
Which means, you get to decide. Your truth, your reality. What you believe is what you’re choosing to see.
Choose with care. With patience. With love.
Freedom starts with the ability to question, and then adjust, the beliefs we hold onto.
Do not be so attached to any one belief that you rob yourself of the richness and wonder of perspective.
Do not be so attached to any one person that you rob yourself of your ability to trust and love YOU.
Do not be so attached to any one identity that you rob yourself of the rest of your life.
Acceptance isn’t resignation. It isn’t saying that everything that happens outside our control is okay. Because sometimes it’s not. And it might never be. But that doesn’t mean WE’LL never be okay.
Acceptance is accepting our feelings about what comes up. Knowing that the emotion, like everything else in this universe, is impermanent. Giving its arrival the same honor that we give its departure.
I welcomed my heartbreak that morning after a particularly hard session. I cried. I wrote. I ran. And then I watched the knot untie itself. This is the gift that heartbreak offers. Another lesson learned. Another truth uncovered. Sometimes we have to let things fall apart to see what’s at the centre. So that we can put it back together again the way that we want. The way that fits best, now. Rearrange the rooms of your heart as often as you’d like. This is the home you’ll spend the most time in. It doesn’t break to hurt you. But to offer you another opportunity for reinvention. Recalibration. Reemergence.
