How many times do you have to have your heart broken before you learn to be more accepting? When someone you care about leaves, what is so enormous that your heart is broken? You break your own heart. No one else does. Regardless of whether someone stays right with you or leaves, everyone’s heart has a mind of its own. Someone’s eyes light up when he sees you or thinks of you, and then his eyes no longer light up. He may mourn the passing of his affection as well as you.
 
Attachment seems natural in the world, even rightful. A wife whose husband’s affection to her has gone may respond: “He has no right,” and her refrain may be, “How could he? How could he?” And blame is cast.
 
Be careful about judging another. Better you continue loving. Loving does not -- absolutely does not -- signify attachment. Love is freeing. If you love, you can love from anywhere. And you can love the one you love whether you are together or not. Remember, I am saying love, not attachment. Attachment, sooner or later, you’ve got to let go of it. You have to let the one you are attached to go free. You keep loving, yet you undo the heart strings of yours that would bind him to you. Take no prisoners, beloveds.
 
Once someone loved you, and now no longer does. It’s something that happened to your loved one too.
 
God bless all the husbands and wives whose hearts stay steady. God bless all the husbands and wives whose hearts fly away.
 
Regardless, good comes from it. Your heart may cry, yet good comes even from a weeping heart.
 
Really, your heartache comes from your not getting your own way, from not seeing yourself as the fairest of all, and your fear of a precipice before you. There is no precipice, beloveds. There is honesty before you and an opportunity to let go. In life, what you want to be does not have to be. Life has a mind of its own.
 
If you feel abandoned, you abandoned yourself. You left your heart of gold and traded it in for a hurt heart or perhaps an angry one.
 
You want your loved one to never have ventured away, yet his heart did, and now your heart may turn against him. You want his love restored, but what about your love? Where did your love go? It is your love now in question. How reliable is your love? Where is your heart of love now?
 
Be what you want to be. Take care of your own heart. Others will take care of theirs.
 
You may say you are just trying to protect your heart. How does hardening your heart and making it brittle protect your heart? Letting go is one thing. Wreaking havoc even in your mind is another thing. Isn’t there something called no-fault insurance? Can there not be something called no-fault love? A heart that wanes may be ahead of a heart that resents.
 
Let your heart be happy. It is your heart. You own it. You are responsible for it. You are not responsible for any other heart but your own. Water your own garden, beloveds. And send love to your neighbor’s garden.
 
And when winter comes and the garden fades, can you not still love the garden and wish it well?
 
Take good care of the garden under your care, and take good care of your heart. Make your heart good-hearted. Be good-hearted. No one set out to hurt your heart. Be sure you are not sanctimonious to another whose eyes stopped lighting up when you came into the room. Keep your heart lighted. Not as a candle to light up the past, but as a bright light to light the path in front of you.