beautiful_questions ovenbird Heartbreak begins the moment we are asked to let go but cannot, in other words, it colors and inhabits and magnifies each and every day; heartbreak is not a visitation, but a path that human beings follow through even the most average life. Heartbreak is an indication of our sincerity: in a love relationship, in a life’s work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and is [an] essence and emblem of care… Heartbreak has its own way of inhabiting time and its own beautiful and trying patience in coming and going. Heartbreak is how we mature; yet we use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream… But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way. There is almost no path a human being can follow that does not lead to heartbreak. Heartbreak asks us not to look for an alternative path, because there is no alternative path. It is an introduction to what we love and have loved, an inescapable and often beautiful question, something and someone that has been with us all along, asking us to be ready for the ultimate letting go. -David Whyte My heart broke the day I was born and has broken every day since. Daybreak and heartbreak are perpetual simultaneities. I know no other way of being. My mother says that I was frequently wide awake at midnight as an infant, howling with inexplicable rage and grief. I came into this world with nerve endings not only exposed but with more than my designated allotment. As a result, I’ve never been entirely sold on this experience of being alive because it’s like living through a daily surgical procedure without the mercy of anaesthetic. And while it’s possible that having my ribcage cracked open at the sternum is a necessary intervention, the pain of being wrenched apart never feels bearable, no matter how many times I endure it. And yet, the thing that I have sought my entire life is not an end to suffering, because suffering is mixed up with meaning and empathy and connection and I clasp those things to me no matter how many wounds they threaten. What I have sought is a hand to hold. If every day is a cold stainless steel operating table and if I am doomed to feel the ice of it against my spine and if I am to be wheeled away endlessly to a place where my insides will be exposed to the scorching surgical lights I want to know that there is someone to tend to me in the aftermath. Because while the pain of a bonesaw meeting cartilage is inevitable, the pain of convalescence can be soothed. It is in the quiet act of tending that heartbreak becomes a growth medium, a foundation for meaning, a “beautiful question.” I can live inside the questions, but not alone. I need someone beside me with the courage and the vulnerability to feel their way into the answers. 250702 ... nr this is a beautiful post. also, "my heart broke the day i was born and has broken every day since" sounds like a great first line of a story. 250702 ... ovenbird Thank you nr! I will have to keep that line in my back pocket in case I ever decide to write a longer form story! 250703 what's it to you? who go blather from