Life should be about the people and the things you love. As a child, I understood this. Life was about doing the things I enjoyed doing with the people who made me feel good about myself. The activities I took part in resulted in fond memories. I thought everything and everyone was put here for my benefit and to add joy to my life because that is what they did. Then life started to weave its web of experience on me. Things don’t always go exactly as you plan; sometimes, you experience failure and have to start over or readjust your sails. Sometimes people don’t do the things you feel are in your best interest, and challenging moments teach us. These lessons are needed to become the best person you can be, but a part of your heart gets wounded when you attach it to an outcome that doesn’t happen. This is suffering, and life is full of it.

These wounds hurt, and subconsciously we want to avoid them again. We do this by building a “barrier” around our hearts. Call it a wall, a prison, or whatever metaphor you choose, but the goal is to protect ourselves from pain. That is the experience of my life. I am here to warn you, don’t do it. Each barrier we create is a limit on us, not protection. I have learned the hard way the truth of this.

Crush

The number one desire of all people is to be loved and accepted for exactly who we are. My life has been a search for that kind of experience. Sometimes I have thought I had found it, only to find it was not meant to be. Early on, the fear of this pain started me building a wall around my heart to protect it from these experiences. There are two choices when you have been hurt, retreat and withdraw from the chance you might be broken. Or be brave enough to put yourself back out there to see what will happen again.

If you don’t play the game, you can never win. Being hurt is not desirable; it takes time to heal after each failed attempt. I have certainly felt like giving up on finding a relationship that works. We start to think we are broken beyond repair.   But then you realize that life is a game that is played to its conclusion, which doesn’t happen until the end. I have built a wall stone by stone only to realize that walls don’t protect. They isolate. Isolation is no way to live your life. It is very safe but not very rewarding. It is time to break down the wall. You will be confined by the very things you built to keep you protected. Breaking chains is what true freedom is all about.

Laying Yourself On the Line

There is only one way for your heart to experience the things it needs, and that is to let it be free and allow it to be vulnerable. Even though many people can hurt you, there are more who will not, and they will never walk through your door if you don’t open it for them. The barriers we build to protect ourselves are just self-made prisons, and being a prisoner to the fear you might get hurt is no positive way to exist. You are suspended in time and space with no chance to love or to b loved.

Let your heart go free and see what happens. At some point in your experience, you will have to stay unhappy, full of regret, anger, or fear, or let your best attributes rise and share them. Through this effort, you will find fulfillment and joy in life. The decision to allow the barriers to fall and be open is the most challenging and scary decision you will ever make. The alternative is to live no life at all and be isolated. This choice is yours. Build your wall higher, or let it fall entirely. Just one of the many choices we make every day. They will all define you and lead to your experiences in each moment. You are responsible for your life choices and the walls you allow to be constructed around yourself or those you raze to the ground. You alone.

“There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we erect.” – Ronald Reagan.

“We should be breaking down barriers, not building walls.” -said Ted Cruz.

“Let us tear down the walls of our hearts to tear down the walls of concrete.”

“Do not judge your day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant.”– Robert Louis Stevenson