What do you mean when you say that your heart hurts? What has your bruised heart been attached to that, when removed, leaves a wound? Love for all you are worth, yet love without attachment. Let the love in your heart have no tentacles. There is no need to hold on. Love exists with or without a certain hand in yours. Love is beyond its manifestations, beloveds.
Love does not leave your heart. It occupies your heart. Only your mind would tell you love has to be placed so, and stay there as you arrange it. But love must be free, and you must free it. The way to love is to let go of it. The way to keep the love in your heart is to free it from all boundaries.
Love does not have to look a certain way. It does not have to wear certain clothes or a certain glance. It does not have to bear flowers to you. Love is its own fruit. Be glad for love in your own heart and do not tether it. Do not force-feed it. Do not tie another’s love to you, for it is not love that binds. Possession is not love. Possession restricts, and love is letting go. Love must be freed, or it is not love. Love cannot be duty. Duty is an expression of a certain style of love, but duty without love is oppression.
If love cannot stay where you will it to, then give it its freedom. Open the cage door, and let the bird of love out. If it is to be love, it must stay with you of its own accord. Love will not be regulated, for then it is not love.
Commit yourself to love but do not commit another’s heart. His heart does not belong to you. His heart may be a falcon, and yours a dove. No matter, let hearts be what they are. In any case, you will not change another’s heart. Let it be you who has a change of heart. Let it be you who loves so much that you free another.
I give free choice, cannot you?
You cannot even demand solidarity of love of your own heart. Your own heart does not always stay still. It does not always comport itself as you would have it. Sometimes it stays on a shelf, and sometimes it jumps off. Sometimes it soars, and sometimes it debates. Let all hearts be what they are. There is no place for subterfuge of the heart. The heart does not take orders easily.
It is not that your heart rebels. It is that your heart must find its own way freely. Binding your heart does not free it. Binding your heart contorts it. Your heart is a straight arrow. It is loyal to love and not to the bindings of it.
What is a woebegotten heart? It has taken too much on itself. It has listened to the mind which would beat it into shape. Love is not tin to be hammered. It is a flower petal that must grow the way it grows. Do not snip it. It must follow its own evolution.
A heart is a like a bee that will stay with sweetness. A loyal heart is not random. It is loyal to love.
Be glad for a heart that rests with yours. Be glad for a heart that cannot stay. Be glad that a heart once pledged its troth to you. No one’s heart owes you anything. Love has no basis in owing. Therefore, love can owe no debt. Love cannot be in thrall to a thought of yours. Be indebted to love to the extent that you know you must free it. Let love alight on you of its own accord. Let love choose to fly with you. Release it.