When Our Hearts Are Full

I'm attracted to the dichotomies and paradoxes of life. Lately, it's been to emptiness and fullness.

1. I have no doubt battled feelings of emptiness. Were some of us born with an original emptiness, and the accompanying need to search, find and fill? Poets and crooners alike have lamented that ache, that hole, that space. Not that it's all that bad; it's just the diametric, corresponding feeling for fullness.

Ray Lamontagne's song, "Empty," is one of the my favorites. The lyrics are so rich with the bleak, heaviness of feeling "this way." When you're down, you see the cold, abandoning side of everything. (And while we're on the subject, it's interesting how we describe it as "empty," yet there is a weight.)

Ray wonders:

And of these cut-throat busted sunsets,

these cold and damp white mornings

I have grown weary.

If through my cracked and dusted dime-store lips

I spoke these words out loud would no one hear me?

2. But I have also felt that swelling in the heart, that grows and glows and electrifies with exuberant, swirling warmth. There are decidedly less songs and poems about the warm fuzzy stuff. A line from "You, Me and the Bourgeoisie" by The Submarines is a helpful one for me (the rest of the song is more of a commentary on consumerism but this part is nice):

Love can free us from all excess

From our deepest debts

Cause when our hearts are full we need much less.

Every day I wake up

I choose love

I choose light

And I try, it's too easy just to fall apart

The last line speaks to the inevitable entropy of all that stands still. As we go into dark or depressed times, we sink, we disassemble, we estrange ourselves. Our senses dull and we don't enjoy life anymore.

A daily mantra: Choose love, choose light, be full. My friend Michelle took this picture of beautiful BLOSSOMS  last Spring!