The Trap Of A Loving Heart
Loving deeply is a gift—but when we spend that love on people who can’t or won’t return it, we risk trapping ourselves in the very world we long to transcend.
I saw an older friend today and I asked, “Got any news?”
“Well,” he said, “I found out my sister died.”
That’s an interesting turn of phrase: “I found out.”
So I asked, “You didn’t speak? You were estranged?”
“Yes,” he said.
“How do you feel?”
“Confused.”
“About?”
“I don’t understand how someone can keep a grudge against you for decades.”
“Well,” I said, “You have a tender heart. You are not like that.”
“And I guess I don’t want to be,” he said.
He couldn’t understand how someone could hold a grudge for decades.
Because his heart doesn’t work that way.
And if you’re someone with a tender, loving heart, you probably know the feeling:
Why don’t they love us and others as much as we are capable of loving them?
My Personal Experience With This
I am tender-hearted, too. I love deeply and widely. Also, I have many friends who are this way.
Most of us want everyone else to love deeply and widely, too. But there is a trap the loving heart can fall into.
It goes like this:
If someone doesn’t love the way I want them to, then I just need to love them harder.
It’s tricky, though. Because it doesn’t work. People who aren’t loving may not able to be loved into being loving.
There are so many reasons for this, including the trauma and pain they have experienced. A heart that stays in this non-loving place is someone J.K. Rowling might have called a “muggle.”
It may not be the muggles’ fault that they are muggles. We feel for them. We don’t want them to be stuck in the muggle world.
But trying to save a muggle can cause us to be stuck, too, in the muggle world.
I have seen so many wizards and witches of love–and I have done it myself–try to figure out what is wrong with the way they love and then try to fix it in order to get a muggle to love them.
But that, itself, is a muggle move.
In my case, I come by this strategy honestly because I wanted love from my parents. I thought I had to figure out how to make them feel more loved so they would love me.
To live there today is to myself return to and live in the world of my parents’ hell—the muggle world.
Trying to fix the past is to live in the muggle world.
I forgive myself for it, and I don’t choose to stay there anymore.
How I’ve Learned To Free Myself
The way out? Be discerning about who you love.
To love people who are deeply and completely capable of loving us back.
To love people who are not muggles.
I want to say it again because the prospect of using one’s loving superpower in this way is so exciting:
Love people who have hearts as big as yours so they can love you—and everyone else—back. Love people who are not black holes but who are shining spheres who reflect your love back into the world.
People who are deeply and completely capable of loving us back are likely to thrive in our love. And we will thrive in theirs.
Our magical love multiplied by their magical love equals infinity.
This is what it means to build the good instead of trying to fix the bad. Do you agree?
Muggles are stuck in the trap of fixing the bad. Non-muggles know that supporting the good—loving people who love—is the source of magic.
But, there is a hard truth to this:
It means leaving people behind.
But you know what my wise friend Tavie said? She said:
“Whatever level of life you move to, there will always be people to love and serve.”
We don’t have to use our love powers on muggles. We can love other wizards and witches instead.
Since that is so, why not choose to live at a level that contains the people who can love you back? Why not love at a level where you see it really count?
I don’t have to live in the muggle world. And nor do you.
By the way, I do this in my coaching practice too:
I work with people who will truly thrive in my love and will pay it forward to the world. They, too, stop being muggles.
A Reflection for You
Where are you pouring your love into places it can’t be returned?
What might happen if you redirected that love toward people who reflect it back—and amplify it?
👉 Leave a comment or hit reply—I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Love,
Colin
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