Do You Choose to Be Vulnerable or to Play It Safe?

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. -- C. S. Lewis, author and scholar

I came across the quote above and I decided to share it. It speaks to me. If you choose to love, you are quite likely to experience pain. I can't, of course, speak to everyone's experience. Perhaps someone has navigated every experience with love without incident and without heartbreak, but I kind of doubt it. Not if the people involved allowed themselves to be vulnerable.