A Lot Of Heart

Earth's the right place for love. I don't know where it's likely to go better.
                            Robert Frost

Haven't written here in a little while. My thoughts have been switching stations like a kid with a car radio dial. I have trouble concentrating in general, but these last couple of weeks I've had a spastic brain -- just focus on a thought, and it switches to another. I want to write about something -- then I want to write about something else. SHINY!!

One common theme has been a song that I. Cant. Get. Out. Of. My. HEAD. But I like it so it's okay. Ha ha. Lady Antebellum's "Just A Kiss". I know, I know....it's sappy and I'm not even a big Lady A fan, but there's something about the harmony, the melody, the lyric....it's crazy but I could have it on repeat for half a day.
(Not that I've tried that. No, believe me, I have NOT. I might though. Just as an experiment, for Science, like.)

So the song gets me thinking about emotions, about feelings, about the way we turn away from sappy-ness and gag.
I've always felt things too deeply, too much. I always hated that about myself. As a kid, I wore my heart on my sleeve, and it got roughed up. When I had a friend, I loved them to the moon and back. When I was hurt, I cried for a day.  (seriously I cried for a day when I was seven. yikes.) I felt everyone else's heartache and joy too. It wears a person out.
There's something rotten in human nature that rejects too much feeling in others, I think. I was open, I was honest, I was myself. I laughed too loud.
I was too much.

I learned, like we all do, to hide the truth of how I felt, finding a neutral expression that would stand by me through painful rejections, awkward moments, electric joy... that would cover my features through the sound of a heart breaking in half, mine or another's.

Another song I love is The Killers "Be Still".

Be still, wild and young

          Long may your innocence reign

          Like shells on the shore
         And may your limits be unknown
         And may your efforts be your own
         If you ever feel you can't take it anymore --

         Don't break character
         You've got a lot of heart

         Be still, one day you'll leave fearlessness on your sleeve...steady and straight
         And if they drag you through the mud,
         It doesn't change what's in your blood
         When they knock you down

         Don't break character
         You've got a lot of heart...
         Be still, be still

         Over rock and chain, over sunset plain, over trap and snare, when you're in too deep,
         In your wildest dream, in your made-up scheme, when they knock you down....

         Don't break character, you've got so much heart....

I don't mind expressing myself more these days. I can take the strange looks I get from people and just laugh at them. I've learned that there are those who are like cold fish on a marble slab, cold through and through, and there is no waking them. You could pour on passion, fire, wind and water. Just dead eyes staring. I don't waste a lot of time, these days, in reviving cold fish.

Others feel a great deal and hide it well. They've got a lot of heart, but they've had to lock it in a safe, that's locked in another safe, that's locked in a vault. That's in a bunker at the bottom of the ocean.
To you I say, don't break character -- be you, your wonderful self. Let yourself feel again, though it sears -- earth might be the best place for love, but it will never be safe.

I can be unbelievably cynical. I surprise myself with my lack of faith in the human race, sometimes. But I'm not willing to bury myself with the cold stones that break and bend; I want to be the river that runs over them, that ripples and sparkles and rushes down falls, that roars and trickles and bubbles and rests in deep dark pools.

I know what is sappy and ridiculous -- I revel in it. I laugh at it, I relish it.
I'm alive and arms outstretched on the open shore.

I have a lot of heart. I'm betting you do too.