Choice is to Destiny as Chance is to Fate

I truly believe that loving requires taking a chance. There are always risks involved and, as we grow older and suffer through enough heartbreak and disappointment, we hopefully tend to get better at measuring those risks in a way that still leaves our hearts open to the experience of love itself.  To both give it freely and unconditionally, but to also receive it from another.

A little over a month ago, I took a chance on a friend I had met through mutual friends of ours towards the end of last year (he's known as James Dean here, for all of you that don't already know that).  By "chance", I mean that I made the choice to let him take me out on a date.  We've been inseparable ever since and I don't think I could have helped falling in love with him, even if I had tried with all of my might and will.

Choice is to destiny as chance is to fate, right? Maybe, what I'm actually trying to share here is my belief that we have to make a choice to take a chance when it comes to love; because otherwise, what the hell is the point anyway?

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could." 

~ Louise Erdrich, (The Painted Drum LP)

There is an aspect of loving someone in which you've got to take a chance. I have encountered many out there on this journey towards starting over wonderful, some divorced and some not (some just bitter, jealous and/or overly judgmental, let's face it) and I receive alternative messages regarding love. Some believe it is necessary to guard your heart completely.  To not let anyone in, until you are absolutely positive and you've measured every risk imaginable.  Especially if you've been burned before by a love gone wrong. Some advise not to let yourself get so completely close to anyone until you've taken complete stock. That it's always best to spare your emotions completely for anyone else, especially post break-up or divorce, and that you should just focus on loving yourself.

In my opinion, that's advice for living with your heart closed to receiving love from anyone unless you're allowed to give it back conditionally and only after you've spent considerable time loving yourself in solitude. It's a concept this serial monogamist can't seem to wrap her head around.

How are you going to love unless you open your heart? How are you going to love without becoming emotionally attached to someone? How can you be positive about your measurement of the risks without also letting someone get to know you and how you actually love yourself, both when you've been in solitude and when you're in a relationship? How can you adequately measure the risks if you only know how to love yourself when you're in solitude; if you never have the chance at practicing self-love in an actual relationship?

I really don't think any of that is possible. At least, for me it isn't. I don't think you can fully love someone without becoming attached, somehow ... somewhere. How can you know if you love someone if you don't let them come close, somehow? How can someone love you if you don't let them come close, somehow?