Love Well.

I don't think I believe that you can love too much. But I wonder if a person can love someone wrong.

There's not a lot of people left around. Who knows now? (Listen and read.)

There are some of us who get attached to people pretty quickly and we get blinded by our needs. Relationships turn themselves inside-out and the veins and muscles are uncontainable.

The bloodlines cross and run and burst open. You get gossip. You get broken airways.

And the muscles tear.

Maybe that's what that feeling is when it burns a little to think about someone we miss, or somebody we hurt: it's the muscles of our ties turning themselves inside-out.

I keep my eyes fixed on the sun.

I think I love people wrong pretty often.

Like maybe we don't recognize enough of what's going on to see how to love them fully--or lightly--enough.

Yesterday Trevor said this: "Our fundamental problem is that we never spend enough time in anyone else's life to find out where they're at."

I think he's right.

This is all a little repetitive of the ideas in a post from a couple weeks ago, but I guess I'm saying it all again because it just means so much to me, and maybe I keep forgetting it.

There are some days that seem to pull our whole lives in to just a couple hours and we're born and twelve and married and dying all between breakfast and dinner without ever stopping for lunch or air. Parents get diagnosed or siblings are killed in car accidents or friends forget who they are. And we're living a little bit of every part of our lives all at once.

Even on a cloudy day. Even on a cloudy day.

But we don't spend enough time.

We don't pull ourselves in to see that some people get stifled and scared by love.

We don't slow down long enough to know how to love right, how to give best.

We try to be true to ourselves and we stunt the ability of people in our lives.

We cut the muscles. We live all our days at once. We breathe and choke and sleep and scream.

We stitch the cut veins, and swallow the thread through our skin, along with the scars. We tie white balloons. No flags. We celebrate. We love wrong.

Cowardice and surrender; Bravery and sacrifice. They're not mutually exclusive. And the pairs don't always go together.

Sometimes the best way to love is to surrender, and that is sacrifice, and that is beautiful.

And sometimes we think we're loving and helping, but we're tearing down the people we love.

I hear too much of that. Another story this week with the masked motive of "I just love you so much that I have to tell you that you're wrong and this is awful." Yeah, sometimes that's what love looks like. But sometimes, the best way to love is to accept that we're wrong, even when we don't know how to believe it.

Even on a cloudy day, I keep my eyes fixed on the sun.

I think we love people wrong, and I think it's a bad, bad thing.

Sometimes, we hurt people, and the best thing to do is to not go back to them. To not bite at the stitches. Sometimes we need the scars.

And some of us can't love people back, or love people well. Some advice?

Don't be in love with someone who won't love well.

Someone who won't love well is a dangerous thing.

Even if that someone doesn't know it.

Usually that someone won't know it.

And do your best not to be that someone, because you'll hurt the people who love you because they can't help but love you. Because people will love you. People do love you, even if they're not doing it well.

Find love in blanket forts and on beaches and in lanterns and in your hands. Find love and hold it well, share it well.

If you didn't listen to the link above, do. And if you did listen, now go watch.

Sometimes we live our whole lives at once. Sometimes we lose ourselves in sleep...

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.