There come a point where it is more important to just let our heart break
and get on with it than to keep trying to figure out why
we are so often in pain or who's at fault and what sort of punishment they deserve.
It takes a lot of work to get healed, to merge the heart and the disheartened.
But even in the least observation, it becomes clear that no one needs any excuse
for being in so much pain. Wherever there is expectation or broken hope,
disappointment or loss, there is the stuff of Shakespearean malady.
Healing is entering, with mercy and awareness,
into those areas of ourselves we have withdrawn from with fear
and a sense of helplessness. Healing is reoccupying those parts of ourselves
that we abandoned because of mental or physical pain.
Healing is replacing our merciless reactions with a merciful response.
Without mercy, we don't have a chance.
And that chance is the breadth of heart that is our birthright.
~ Stephen Levine
from Untended Sorrow
art by Van Gogh
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