To risk is to truly live.

"All suffering comes from love and affection.
If I then suffer because of transitory things,
I and my heart still have love for transitory things and I do not cherish God with all my heart and I do not yet love what God wants to be loved by me and with him.
How then, is it surprising that God should allow me rightly to suffer pain and sorrow?"

~Meister Eckhart


In having been an army of one for so much of my adult life has provided settings for some real self-confrontation. Of course, no one asks to be tossed into the desert. We do not go gently into that good night. I am certain it is an unseen will that relegates a burgeoning soul who longs to love, to have to navigate an uncharted abyss. Weeks become months become years. But I have been making the best of what has not been enjoyable or consoling. Surely and undoubtedly, this world has known far worse, but indeed there is an element of the universal in the way every individual is inevitably brought to confront what it will be like to be alone. Alone and forgotten. Some of us yearn to be connected to others- many for the cause of love, many simply to belong somewhere in the world. None of us like the idea of living ignominiously.

Indeed, it does no good to stare at the ground. The benefits of having known the depths come in the forms of comprehension: we can better understand what befalls us, and can offer understanding and respectful witness to others. We can look out for those around us who suffer alone. My Dad used to tell me to do someone else a favor before they ask you. In these reflections I become certain that when my true love finds me, I will be reverently grateful for her, and to her.