It is easy for us to call out for others to change and do better, to leave their old ways behind and embrace new and better practices.

It is hard for us to go through the same process ourselves. We have stories. Our choices and habits got us here, and oftentimes we feel we would be happy staying where we are right now. In fact, a gentleman once told me “Your life is perfect. Right now you are in a perfect place. Don’t change anything”.

I think he meant well by saying that, and he wanted to protect me from pain and loss, to shield me from the heartbreak and disappointment that marks so many of our lives.

Would that be a good life?

To live statically?

Suspended in a single moment like an old stone statue?

C. S. Lewis answers this beautifully.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even 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. To love is to be vulnerable.