A Heart Beneath My Boot

Humans are blind, cruel creatures. We lash out against those closest to us who love us most, and then cast them aside when they have nothing else left to give. In return, those who love us the most will inevitably be the ones whose knives plunge deepest into our hearts...with the precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel, because they know exactly where it hurts the most.

Life is a cycle, not of birth and death, but of hurt and hurting others. Yeah, cynical isn’t it. But this is what I have learned. Happiness is present in all of us, for a little while, but permanent in only a handful of those who choose to ignore the pain.

Ignoring the pain just postpones and deepens what we have to face when finally we choose to accept our wounds. I’ve seen mothers, whose sons don’t return her love and worse yet, refuse to accept their mother’s love. I’ve seen fathers who are distanced from their children, so encased in their armor of that distance, both caused and inherited by and from their own fathers, that they can’t break through the invisible miles to offer genuine words of sentiment. Women rip the hearts out of men on a daily basis. According to women, men are the bastards who cast aside women’s love for them and step on it with the heel of a boot as we walk out the door…according to women, men don’t have hearts. I say this with a smile, ladies, because it is true. You have one and all ripped our hearts from our chest, still beating, and smiled as you watch the light fade from our eyes. Father to son, mother to daughter, and lover to lover, pain is one of two things that binds us together stronger than blood.

One thing binds us together stronger than pain. And this is love. Despite the permanence of pain in our lives, loving is the most important thing we can do during our short stay on this planet. The act of love is the one thing that can overcome pain, well that and some of the more powerful narcotics out there on the market. Pain is an inevitable part of life, and we must live with that; but love too can exist.

Write this down, make a little note, all we can do in this life is love and hope. We can't worry about the hurt waiting at the end of the road, eventually hurt comes, whether it is next year, or tomorrow. What matters is that we live the moments in between like there is no tomorrow, so that we are able to say that we didn’t let the threat of pain keep us from loving.

Remember, all we can do is love and hope.