How do we keep our hearts open when someone we love seems to be closing theirs?
There is a particular sorrow in loving someone who is still present, yet feeling the distance of their leaving.
We hold on to who we once were together, while fearing what we may become apart.
And somewhere between memory and fear, we lose sight of what remains.
Perhaps this is love’s deepest paradox.
We long to be understood, yet struggle to understand.
We fear another’s judgment, while quietly judging them.
We want their hearts to remain open, even as we feel our own beginning to close.
How do we love without losing ourselves?
How do we stand for what we believe without standing against the humanity of another?
Perhaps love does not ask us to agree, nor to remain silent in the presence of harm.
Perhaps it asks us to remember that we each carry both light and shadow.
Perhaps the greatest act of love is not convincing another to see the light we see,
but refusing to extinguish our own when they cannot.
We cannot choose what another sees.
We can only choose what we become.
— a reflection by Corvalva
Return to The Distance Between Us.
Notice what shifts.