The longing to attach and connect, to love and be loved is the fiercest longing in our soul. It is the cry in every fibre of our being, the drive behind alot of why we do what we do in our everyday lives much more then we ever realize it.
Especially so with the ones we hold close to our hearts. Our family, close friends, our partner, or spouse. We seek their attention, their approval over our lives, to be special in their sight. That's when we open up for disspointment, we began placing expectation on how they should be towards us, how they should treat us, we expect a perfect almost god-like image of how they should be. Not realizing that they are human just like us. That's when we began to withdraw to solitude, after all love hurts.... being close to people would also mean getting hurt.
Perhaps we have made vows to ourselves "I'm never gonna love again!" "I'm not gonna trust leaders anymore" "This is the last time i'm ever going to go out with them" on and on......... WE become so defensive of our fragile heart, till we never allow anyone to get close to us, because of all the defensive walls (personal vows) we've made.
Porcupines are the most solitiude creatures. Wolves run in packs; sheep hurdles in flocks; elephants in herds... etc. Not so for the porcupine, they travel alone most of the time. However porcupines don't always want to be alone. In late autmn the porcupines thoughts turn to love. Love turns out however to be risky as the femal porcupines are only open to a "candlelight dinner and movie" only ONCE A YEAR. A turndown is often heard of by the male porcupine. Fear and anger makes them difficult creatures to be around. The spines around the porcupines make them hard to get close to one another.
The question is "How do we get close without getting hurt?" Perhaps the porcupine has such diliemma, but isn't that the diliemma of human history today? We see divorces, break ups, broken relationships everywhere. All of a result of hurt and anger.
Well, being in camp the past few months has thought me what it means to "live in harmony with one another" (Romans 12:16) "bear with one another in love" (colossians 3:13), Make every effort to live at peace with ALL MEN (Hebrews 12:14) . As other then my family, i've never been so close to a group of guys i never known. Just this week alone i saw the first quarrel happening in my squad that almost lead to a fight.
How to get close without getting hurt? Well perhaps i could share on how i get along...
1) Realize that no one is "normal", not even you. Human like porcupines have their thorns, it could be rejection, condemnation, resentment, bitterness, arrogance, selfishness, envy. Some hide it better then others, but once u get close to them you'll find that it is there. They burrow the thorns under their skin, they can wound, fester or even kill.. Well "He/she look like the perfect girl or guy for us..." Often such mindset would cause us to place unrealistic expectation on our partner or people around us.
2) We are no different. Everyone has a disgusting, irritating side, including yourself. And most often time, the very trait we dislike in others is in ourselves as well. It could be a blindspot, as Jesus mention "Why do we pay attention to the sawdust in our brother's eyes and pay no attention to the wooden plank in our own eye?" Or it could be we are having difficulties living with ourselves, as we hate that part of ourselves so much that when we see others having that same trait, we impose the same hatred.
We could easily name some porcupines in our lives, but not knowing we are also a porcupine to someone.
3) Well, know that its not about you, its about people.
"People don't exist for you, you exist for people."
Let Jesus be the love in our lives, the closest friend, our security. We can't give what we don't experience ourselves. Simliarly if we have not understood what it felt to be loved with no strings attached, we cannot give that kind of love to the people around us.
Acceptance, approval, appreciation and admiration we reali don't need them, but blessing a life, especially one we find so irritating, would be like pouring cold water over heaps of burning coal.
Well i always remember the story of these two man who happen to meet one day. One had a heart that is clean and spotless, while the other man had holes, some holes were filled but the shape was not exact. The man with the clean and spotless heart began to laugh and mock the man who had the heart with holes. After sometime the man began to reply "the holes in my heart were the people i gave a peice of my heart to, but they never return a peice of their heart to me, while those that were filled with irregular shapes were those who gave a part of their heart back but was never able to fill back the kind of love i showered."
The man with the pure heart then in tears, then painfully took out a peice of his heart and gave it to the man and filled it into one of the holes.
