“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell”. – C.S. Lewis
I came across this quote recently and it has me pondering. I know this is about me. This is my life. I need to spend more time with this and process more before I try to really write about it, but it has hit me. I think it’s time to move outside the comfort zone and begin to risk more.
How much of this describes my culture, as well? Once a society can afford “hobbies and little luxuries”, is it common for it to sacrifice a certain amount of intimacy with family, neighbors, and friends? When a developing country becomes more wealthy, does community begin to give way to individualism? The daily rub of relationships is messy. Money can buy us space. Nice tidy space.
Something to think on.
the rogue and peasant slave 
CS Lewis has it right. The risk is worth it. Hurts do heal, the same as a scratch. It just takes time.
Something to think about for sure. It is easy to build that protective wall – less easy to tear it down.