“Ah,” she cried out in anguish. Then, “What good is it? What purpose is served by having a heart? By being warm? I’ve seen nothing but bad things come from opening your life to someone, letting down your walls, as they say. I’ve witnessed countless friends and family members hurt this way. Why do it? Why do it at all when you know you are bound to be hurt, one day—eventually? And then!, you’re hurt so deeply and for so long—months, years even! One of my friends hypothesized once that for every month a girl is with someone, it takes her two months to recover once he is gone; that’s a year to get over a six-month relationship and four years to heal after two. What a long time to be emotionally debilitated! Why, why do it? Why commit to inevitably being hurt?
“If I could, I would make it so no one ever felt pain. I would turn everyone’s hearts hard and impenetrable, unbreakable. This way no one would ever know what it was like to be hurt.”
He thought her words over, let them sink in for a long time before he formulated his answer.
Finally, “It’s naive of you to think that, to believe that life would be better if we were unable to feel pain. If we couldn’t be hurt, the world would be a cold place, and I’d imagine the human race would destroy itself. Without pain, we would be incapable of all that is good in the world: compassion, empathy, joy even. We wouldn’t be working to save the rainforest or rescue abused and abandoned puppies or cure cancer. Why? Because we wouldn’t care. We would be as sponges in the sea, simply letting life happen to us—just sitting, in one spot…forever—never progressing, never improving. You see now, pain is necessary, pain is a bad thing for a good purpose.”
Emily. 21 now. UCSB.I like to stay busy and smile.
The universe is my limit.
