I Hope Your Heart Never Stops Breaking

I hope your heart breaks, and not just in terms of a romantic relationship not working out. I hope your heart breaks for the other things in life.

I hope your heart breaks when you see people being discriminated against, when you see the insensitivity that’s apparent all around us.

I hope your heart breaks when you see people moving out of their comfort zones and standing in solidarity with their neighbors.

I hope your heart breaks when you read stories of people navigating their way helplessly through the global crisis we’re facing.

I hope your heart breaks when you scroll through posts on social media that address issues far from home and then carries you back to matters that are happening right where you are.

I hope your heart breaks at the silent suffering that takes place day after day, injustices that are not recorded and stories that will never be told. For people who will never be fought for and lives that will continue to go without mattering.

I hope that when your heart breaks for these things, they cause you to look deep within yourself and force you to ask yourself the tough questions. They force you to question your beliefs and your views of people and the world. I hope they cause you to just stop whatever you’re doing, however you’re living your life, and sit down with this for a while to see how you can do better.

It’s only when we allow our hearts to break at these things in life that we realize that there is a world out there that is so much bigger than the one we’ve created for ourselves. There is so much more to the stories than what appears on our social media feed. There is so much more change waiting to happen in addition to changing what our platforms preach.

There is a change waiting to happen on the inside.

When we allow our hearts to break, we allow reality to enter and seep right through our veiled existence. We allow space for knowledge and understand the need to silence our thoughts and ideas about the world so that we can finally listen to what’s really being said. So that we can feel what’s really being felt. So that we can finally unlearn everything that we’ve been taught about not making another human’s problems our own. We can unlearn our need to protect ourselves from going in too deep and addressing the real issues at play. We can undress our cloak of desensitization to unjust situations because of a deep set idea that nothing will ever change.

When we allow our hearts to break, the pain of reality enters, but along with it enters courage. Courage to want to see and live in a different world. Courage to take small steps right where we are and in whatever way we can so that these stories aren’t simply part of a news cycle.

We need to allow our hearts to break so that we can let out the need to only care about things that affect us or benefit us in some way. This makes room for sensitivity to take up space so that we’re left shaken at these occurrences, no matter how many times they take place and thrust us into contemplation and action.

I hope our hearts never stop breaking for the beautiful and broken things of this world.