Your heart is sometimes like a frog. It hops up and down. Sometimes your heart is like a lamb that wants to be petted. Sometimes your heart is an ember, burning bright. Sometimes your heart, it seems, has been made captive in another's heart, a willing captive who wants to fill up another's heart with its own.
This matter of hearts fills you with joy, and then your heart gets hurt and hops down like a frog and sulks under a leaf and doesn't want to go out again.
Life on Earth does seem to be a matter of hearts.
You have heard not to wear your heart on your sleeve. Of course, that's where you are to wear it. Otherwise, you dissemble. You hide. You lie. You weigh the cost of letting your heart be known. You would rather be smart than honest. In the world, it does take courage for your heart to reveal itself. This does not mean that you gush and expect retribution. It is just a fact of life that you love. Of course, in the world, you love sometimes here and sometimes there, and your own love is not always reliable. Like the frog, it bounces up and down and back and forth and sometimes gets lost in a maze.
Yet, think of a world where everyone is truthful. Everyone would thank everyone for a truthful heart that speaks of love when the heart loves and does not pretend love under any circumstances. The human heart is not to be embarrassed about love. Love is meant to issue from your heart. Let your love fly high like a flag. Love when you love. Love where you love.
Your heart is not meant to become a burden, not to you and not to another. Your love is your own responsibility, not anyone else's. Nor is love meant to be a barter. Love is just meant to be and not a chattel. Oh, to love for the love of it. Oh, to love without exacting a payment from anyone. Oh, to love freely, freely to give and freely to receive without prior conditions. Just love. Let love be a way of life.
Love the bus driver. Love the person on the bus who jostles you. Love all the people who sit or stand on the bus. Love the commuters. Love the people who walk. Love the traffic. Love the noise, and love the quiet. Love yourself without qualm. Love is what you are meant to do, not with a half a heart but with your whole heart, not with effort, no, not with effort but with the joy of it.
Loving does not mean tying up your heart. It means freeing your heart. It means freeing your heart from shackles you have put on it. You have too often forbidden your heart to love. Casting yourself at another is not love, but casting your love is love. Your love is not meant to be like a fishing pole that must retract a fish. Oh, no, your love lets all the little fishes free. Your love casts not nets. Your love casts love.
Love is like the sunlight that blesses all it touches. How powerful the sunlight that alights and leaves its blessings. The sun never learned to count. The sun is free. And you are free because you bind not another to return your love as though it were a favor. Of course, your love is a favor, and yet you are not owed. Nor do you own. You do not own your own love and you do not own another's. Love is free and love frees.