I hesitate to pen this as I’m currently in the throes of said vulnerable state. However, if you want to find what you’re looking for or achieve your goal, you must take a calculated risk. Specifically I speak of the vulnerable state of one’s heart.

You know, that fleshy, red beating thing in your chest that flutters, does backflips and sinks down low into your gut when all you want it to do is just sit there and behave itself. If you’re going to get anywhere with your calculated risk, you need to take that heart, put it up on display and hope that it doesn’t embarrass the hell out of you.

Love is an indescribable, elusive and precious commodity that we all have within us to give but finding ‘it’ – that which is: finding another whom wishes to partake in the giving/receiving of said ‘love’, is quite another matter. Many of us struggle with this for years. You think you’ve found, embraced it and now can relax with it, but then it suddenly peters out into nothing like that dribble of rain after a brief but torrent cloud burst. You think it’s cropped up again (and oh, what a joyous surprise!) – but, as it turns out, it’s only lust (love for you, lust for them).

So. I took out my pretty scarlet lump (hypothetically speaking) and had a really good look at it. I gently caressed my fingertips along the soft curves noting the chips and cracks across the circumference. I poked and prodded, seeing that they were well worn but fairly stable. See here, those fissures that run from the centre and spiral outward? Those are hurts, wounds and battle scars.

I’ve acknowledged them, kissed them and rained tears upon them from time to time and over the course of my life – they’ve slowly healed. I’m rather attached to them, actually, as they make me…’me’. Those are my lessons, my references and my strength.

When I choose to become completely open, when I agree to take that risk and hang my vulnerable heart in the window of my soul, it means I’m ready. It means I offer nothing by purity; I give only unconditionally and my expectations are zero. There is no reservation when I hang this baby in front of someone. I hold absolutely nothing back and if you want, you can take that little beaten up heart in your own hands and have a good look at it for yourself. I promise it doesn’t bite.

If I start having expectations that someone just might reciprocate, I open myself up to disappointment and to be frank, it’s not exactly fair to the other party. You don’t know what ‘they’ are going through. You don’t know what it takes for ‘them’ to find that giddy, excited (I can’t stop thinking/dreaming/fantasizing about you) feeling. They may never get there…that’s the ‘risk’ I mentioned. It’s a big one. There are consequences.

However, if said other recipient whom you’re just dying to hand over your darling, beating love-lump to just isn’t going to walk down the same path, you need to be prepared to take that rejection and do something with it.

Oh yeah, and I don’t mean just sit on it and stew about it. Take it, love it, kiss it and send it out and away into the universe so that you can once again heal. Send it with love – love from that heart of yours. Let it go where it needs to go because it’s nothing personal and you don’t need to own it, hang on to it and put in on continuous play just to torture yourself.

Don’t be a masochist! You know your worth. You know that each and every one of us is really: all that and a bag of chips. Eventually someone will walk right up to that heart you’ve got hanging in the window of your soul and point to his own beating, glowing receptacle of love and say:

Here, this is for you, I believe yours is for me….