One of my all-time favorite metaphors is that of the rose. It has beauty and delicateness, but also thorns. My interpretation is that with beauty comes pain.

With the love and the unfoldment of beauty with another human comes inevitable pain. They are a package deal. We can't care that deeply with another and expect to not get hurt.

Most of us have been hurt or betrayed by loving someone.

We seek the love and beauty that comes from exposing our hearts and becoming vulnerable, yet we are reluctant to do so because we got hurt badly when we did this before. We are afraid that we might not survive being hurt like that again.

If we allow (or have allowed) ourselves to feel and heal the pain of being hurt before, it should help us believe that we could heal it again. We learn to "believe in our survivability." Then, it is just an issue of willingness to risk.

We tell ourselves a story that we can experience the beauty of love without really letting go. We figure we can have the beauty and unfoldment of the rose without the pain.

We allow ourselves to experience some safe, guarded, and superficial love and tell ourselves it is the real deal. But then why are we still so lonely? Deep down we know that it is not the same.

The metaphor of the rose is here to remind us that if you want the true beauty and fulfillment of love, we have to accept that pain comes with it. Are you willing to risk the pain?

Photo by Sergey Semin on Unsplash