We Cannot Fly Unless We Jump

Ever since I’ve began telling people that I’m a Love Coach, the response I get has been very often a resounding “Oh I really need you!” While this is obviously great for my coaching career, and while I’ve won quite a few clients just by meeting them, it’s also unfortunately a sign of our times when there are more singles than ever and where people struggle more than ever before to truly connect (in person) to another human being.

The problem with today is that we all walk around being extra polite and PC to one another and playing some game that makes us seem like everyone else playing the same game. But this doesn’t work. It doesn’t get us what we actually want, which is normally to be really loved and accepted by another human being and to truly love and accept them back; and it doesn’t bring us any closer to happiness.

On this coming Valentine’s Day in this year of 2016, have the rules of dating changed so much that we don’t even recognize what we’re meant to be anymore? We’ve forgotten what it feels like to love for real (and that’s a word few dare to utter anymore), to fight for what we truly want, to put our hearts out there and possibly have them ripped out. We’re so afraid of getting hurt, that we don’t allow ourselves to feel anymore. But can we ignore the fact that we cannot fly unless we jump. We cannot soar unless we take a risk and at least attempt flight.

We are so afraid of getting hurt, that we do nothing. We are so fearful of crashing that we take no risks. Instead we flick from one image to another on our Tinder screens, because that is a safer type of rejection than actually putting ourselves out there and being rejected. We go through bodies like they’re disposable but we don’t get past the limbs into the soul and we don’t allow anyone into our soul. Everything seems too replaceable, too ready to be discarded. There is always something better around the corner, isn’t there? Why work on anything? Why try to make anything last when there is always something else that is younger, more shiny, more new, and less full of cracks.

We are so fearful of the pain that will maybe possibly come from being hurt one day if someone doesn’t love us as we are that we hide who we are under layers of protective unfeeling instead. We take no risks; we jump no leaps; we stand for nothing; and we never stand out of the crowd of everyone else who stands for nothing too. We blend; we fit in. We forget that what actually makes us special — what makes us amazing — is that fearless individuality that we’re trying so hard to hide.

I have been hurt and I have done the hurting. I have cried buckets for both. But it has passed and I’ve healed and I’ve moved forward. But of all the painĀ  that one can feel in this world, there is little that feels as bad as loneliness. There is little to cure that constant ache that comes from hiding behind all the layers that stop us from ever reaching what we really want to hold. It isn’t constantly changing bodies that we’re after; not really. Even those who are temporarily distracted by bodies are actually after something much more profound eventually.

But as it works in finance; it works the same in life and in love: no risk; no return. If you risk nothing — nothing of yourself and nothing of your heart — then you end up with nothing. You end up alone. Or worse, you end up with the wrong someone and just as lonely as if you were alone. As someone who has been in all directions of pain, I think that one is the worst.

Valentine’s Day is coming this week, and I know the feeling of wanting to hide, hibernate, escape, whatever. I know the feeling of wanting to run away and ignore that ache that comes from being lonely on a day that seems to celebrate love. But what if we took a risk and did something different this time around. What if instead of running, hiding, hibernating, escaping, or whatever; we stood still and faced the reality of our situation and actually looked it flat in the face and said “no more!” What if we did something about it. What if we took a risk. What if we jumped. What if we laid our heart raw and took the risk of someone trampling on it. What if we said, “that’s it! Now I do everything I can to make sure that from now on my life will be different.”

We will never win another’s heart if we are constantly afraid of letting ours go bare. We will never set ourselves apart from the masses if we always just say the right thing that we hope they’re wanting to hear, if we just blend. We will never stand out from a crowd of everyone else if we behave like everyone else. To be noticed, to be seen, to be felt, to be desired above every other person, we must be different. We must be brave. We must risk everything. And if we feel that we have nothing; well then we have nothing to lose. We must ignore the fear; we must take a risk. We must jump and even if we fall flat on our faces, those moments of excitement, the moments of passion — those moments when we really feel that we can only experience if we take a risk — they will be bigger and better than anything we can imagine if we play it safe; and they will last us a lifetime of memories and maybe even will create a lifetime of love.

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