heart(locks and keys)

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
— C.S. Lewis

 

i had to think about this a bit...what to write.  i'm not sure.  there are times (as a friend of mine calls it, about me) that i am disassociated and removed.  i seperate myself from my own space and people find it challenging to be in it with me at the same time.  it is fair to say to those people, i feel this way about myself every now and again.  strangely, social media propels this sensation of distance for me.  (i am very tempted to just not log onto fb anymore...i'd delete it, but i'm still too social a creature to abandon it)  

in a profound desire to connect, have we simply removed ourselves from humanity?  isn't it about things being a bit messy, and painful; a bit cleansing, and a lot pleasurable?

for those that know me, and know me well - i like to work with my hands.  i like putting things together and taking them apart.  the abstract is harder for me to work in (not really, but when i know there is an outcome i work better at it).  such that - and sorry if this story is redundant - back when i first started grad school i needed a computer desk but was being knit-picky.  one afternoon my brother comes over with a truck he had just picked up from our parentals and behind it was a fully disassembled paralegal station.  all the nuts and bolts were in a massive zip lock.  i asked him what i was supposed to do with it, and his response:  dad said you'd figure it out.  i did, in three hours, or so, the desk was assembled - it was a beautiful beast.  go back some years before that - my father comes home and throws me a set of keys: my own friggin car!  i run down and it is a beautiful used old school civic hatchbatch, baby blue!, i'm in love.  i get in it.  it's a manual.  i'd never driven a manual car.  i go up and asked him if he'd teach me, and his response:  you'll figure it out.  i did, three days (stalling, some embarrassment and perhaps a minorly damaged transmission) later.  is that the moral rule of my life:  i'll figure it out?

humanity and relationships are not things to put together or take apart or figure out - per se.  i'm not sure i'll figure this one out daddy - but tell you what:  i will be prepared and open and provide all that i may, and prepared and open to receive as well...  i do not prefer the sterile and safe social networks.  give me them trusted few friends, my cowboy and my family and i'm good.  (and with all i have now - i am great...  and so grateful).