For years I didn’t wanted a dog! Its not that I don’t like animals, but only lately I have found out the true reason why. Not, it’s not the hours of exercise and caring that I had to get use to-although that was a concern, a more deeper reason bothered me. I found out that the fear of one day loosing our beloved pet was the real motive of resisting that thought. The heartache and pain that that event would cause to our family made me resist that idea.
We do the exact same thing with our friendships. We are afraid of building deep friendships for fear of getting hurt by friends or they leaving us. We refuse to love because love can be crushing. We forsake our dreams our deepest desires because hope has been deferred, disappointment is a bitter pill to swallow? So, we ‘take control’ of our lives by suffocating our hearts. By limiting our opportunities and reducing them to more ‘manageable’ ones.
We buy a goldfish, we love partially, we dream small…….. Then we wonder why with each passing day we extinguish a little. Why the spark of life gets dimmer and dimmer.
“The desires of good people lead straight to the best,” says the proverb. That’s how we know if our hearts are open, if they are awake: by the nature of our desires. Do our desires lead us to the ‘good enough’ options for our lives? To they lead us to ‘acceptable’ ones? Or do they guide us to the best choices we can make for our lives?
If we sense our lives shrinking, closing in- would it be that we have reduced our desires, what we really long for to manageable sizes? Have we perhaps build a dam to contain them and keep them checked, safe?
If the answer is yes, can you feel the walls beginning to crack lately? Don’t be afraid! Let the dam burst. Let the excitement and life bubbling desires run through our hearts again and let us sprint wild with them. “Ask and I will give you the nation” is what welcomes us to the other side. Desire expands our lives, despair shrinks them!