Dancing with Love in the New Year

Love Like You Have Been Hurt

Dance Like Nobody’s Watchin’, but

Don’t Love Like You’’ll Never Get Hurt

Making a Conscious Choice About Love

“You got to sing like you don’t need the money

Love like you’ll never get hurt

You got to dance like nobody’s watchin’

It’s gotta come from the heart”

                                            From “Come from the Heart”

                                            by Richard Leigh and Susanna Clark

Dance like nobody’s watchin’? Oh yeah. Love like you’ll never get hurt? Not in a heartbeat. Or, as the French would say, “Au contraire.” It’s less than wise to approach love and loving like you never have been or never will be hurt. Loving with a sense of freedom, abandon, and a full heart—unconditional love—is a fine emotion. However, it’s a mistake to forget about that love that wasn’t quite right or was foolish, even dangerous. Disregarding such experiences and opening once again to love like you’ll never get hurt or never were hurt is not the best path. Doing so means your former hurt produced no knowledge, no realizations, that hearts broken, emotions tested, and even lives lost were in vain.

To love like you’ll never get hurt or like you’ve never been hurt means that the next time you hear that small voice, you ignore it. That’s the voice that speaks with wisdom and experience, the one that tried to steer you away in the past, saying, “No, not this one. Don’t let your heart go there.”

Loving like you’ll never get hurt means you continue to defy that voice and deafly, deftly, say, “Yes, this one.” It means any pain you ever felt following that defiance was for naught. Loving like you’ll never get hurt or you’ve never been hurt means that after the brokenness, you forget the voice that spoke your own inner wisdom.

I believe we ignore that hurt at our peril and invite yet more hurt into our lives. The better way, the wiser way, if you’ve loved and been hurt (and haven’t most of us?) is to use that experience. Go ahead and love, but love like you have been hurt. Love like you have been hurt, but don’t view love with fear. Love like you value love enough to listen to the voice of wisdom and experience.

The wounded heart, rightly so, realizes the cost of pain; yet when choosing a wiser path, the healed heart doesn’t close up or close off. Instead, it opens with tenderness and simple gentle care to caress what is most dear about life—love. Loving like you have been hurt means you realize just how precious is this thing we call love. Love like you have been hurt and you will know when the love you choose is the right love.