Some of us learn early how to carry our own weight.
Perhaps no one ever tells us we have to.
We simply learn.
If something needs doing, we do it.
If we fall, we get up.
If there is trouble, we find a way through.
We become independent because, somewhere along the way, we understand that no one is coming to rescue us.
And eventually, what began as survival can become strength.
For me, that strength found a direction when I first heard the Prayer of St. Francis.
To understand rather than be understood.
To console rather than be consoled.
To love rather than ask to be loved.
Something in those words spoke deeply to me.
I wanted to live that way.
And so I tried.
I became the one who listened.
The one who understood.
The one who showed up.
There is something beautiful in giving ourselves to one another this way.
But there was something I did not see.
I had become so accustomed to looking outward that, somewhere along the way, I had become almost invisible to myself.
A ghost.
Then something happened I was not prepared for.
The light turned toward me.
Someone saw me.
Not for what I could do for them.
Not for what I could carry.
Not for how strong I could be.
Me.
And being seen frightened me.
When love was offered without asking anything from me in return, I cried.
I didn’t know what to do with it.
There was nothing to fix.
Nothing to repay.
Nothing to prove.
I could only receive..
And that was humbling.
I suddenly understood something I had missed.
I had thought love meant learning to give without asking to receive.
But love was never meant to travel in only one direction.
There is the hand that reaches out.
And there is the hand willing to receive what is offered.
Both belong to love.
Perhaps that is the circle I could not see until I found myself standing on the other side of it.
And perhaps sometimes we discover that our empty hands are not evidence that we have nothing left to give.
They are simply open.
Ready to receive.
— a reflection by Corvalva
Return to Empty Hands.
Notice what shifts.