feelings

Capacity for love

Early in our relationship, my wife gave me this warning. She said, “Remember, the amount I love you is also the amount I can hate you.” I’ve sat with this statement for years and, the more I’ve thought about it, the deeper the sentiment becomes.

When I’ve told other people this story, I’ve gotten mixed reactions. Some people laugh, others are taken aback, and some people really get it. There’s a deep truth in her words.

Love, as I have come to understand and experience it, is more than just a feeling. It’s a capacity. In other words, there is a space in our hearts which love is intended to fill. The more we love someone, the greater this capacity for love becomes.

But what happens when that person hurts us, leaves us, or passes away? That same capacity for love then becomes filled with other emotions. Our potential for love becomes our potential to feel everything else.

So the amount we love someone is also the amount we can be hurt by them if they betray or abandon us. It’s the amount we can miss them if they leave or if we go away. It’s the amount we can worry about them if they are hurt or sick. It’s also the amount we can grieve for them if they die.

Upon understanding this truth, there is a temptation to protect ourselves by limiting or shutting off our capacity to love. If we don’t open ourselves up to love, we can’t get hurt, after all. But this is a grave mistake because any attempt to limit our capacity to feel pain, anger, or sorrow also limits our capacity to feel love, joy, and pleasure.

While these may all feel like different emotions, they have the same source. Our capacity for love is our capacity for all emotions. If we want to feel love, we get to feel everything. And the amount of love we are capable of feeling is the amount of every other emotion we are capable of feeling also. Love, after all, is a capacity.

When my wife told me the amount she loves me is also the amount she can hate me, she was really telling me, “I’m opening my heart to you. The greater my love grows for you, the stronger my feelings become for you, the more vulnerable I become in the process. By loving you, I am giving you the power to hurt me. Please don’t hurt me. I will feel it deeply. I am entrusting you with my heart. Please be kind.”

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

The heartache of the spiritual path

The spiritual life does not save us from heartache or suffering. It opens us up to experience life more fully. By choosing to live with an open heart, we are choosing both joy and sadness, pleasure and pain, connection and heartbreak. We get it all. 

Whether we know it or not, when we step onto the spiritual path, we are making a decision to feel everything, to experience everything. As a spiritual director once told me, “Unfortunately, we do not get to selectively numb. We can feel everything or nothing.” Openness is a package deal.

But it’s hard. Living with an open heart is hard. Love is hard. People we care about pass away, some betray or abandon us, and others disappoint us and let us down. And, in spite of this, we have to keep going. 

People who were on the path before us, who once led, guided, and accompanied us, they sometimes fall off or walk away, or they may simply stop seeking. They stop growing. Likewise, people we entered onto this journey along side, or met along the way, may not stay with us for the long haul. We are lucky if they do, but chances are they won’t. 

Quite often what feels like a parallel path of lifelong companionship turns out to be only a brief meeting at a crossroads. Even the deepest connections, connections that feel eternal, may not last but a moment before we are pulled by God or self in different directions. And parting hurts. 

If we are dedicated to this path, however, if we have chosen to love and seek God above all else, we must keep going. For those of us who long so deeply for divine connection with the infinite and eternal source of all things that nothing else will suffice, we must continue on the path even, or perhaps especially, when it gets lonely. We must walk in faith with our broken hearts toward the one who heals all wounds. 

But it’s not going to be easy. Easy was never the promise anyway. It’s going to be real. It’s going to be true. It’s going to be meaningful. It’s going to be rewarding. It’s going to be fulfilling. But it’s not going to be easy. 

This hardened world will break our fragile hearts, but as the late Leonard Cohen said, “That’s how the light gets in.” 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox.