Our broken hearts

Sometimes I think we're all born with broken hearts and it's just a matter of time before we find ourselves gathering the pieces, setting them back in place only to have them slip out of our hands again. We're all brokenhearted and the only difference between each of us is that we're at different stages of the healing process. Some of us have just watched our hearts fall to the ground and shatter into a million, dusty pieces, while others can vaguely remember what that pain feels like but empathize through bearing some of the weight of the heartache we see in others.

Maybe that's where deep human connection comes from -- from being able to reignite the piercing ache of letting go of love, for one reason or another, through listening to the stories and watching the expressions of the people we care about. Seeing their pain come out in the form of tears or anger or disconnection or frustration and being brought back to that place that we all know so well.

And while some hearts are still lying, broken on the floor, there are others that have been carefully put back together, some pieces forever lost, some that don't quite fit, but that live on in that hopeful kind of way. These hearts are are not reinforced, or better protected, nor do they withstand pressure any better than a less fractured one but because we've spent so much time repairing the same pieces, carefully looking for the bits we think we've lost and rejoicing when we find them again, they have found a way to survive even without being perfectly in tact.

Can broken hearts be repaired by accepting pieces of another? They must be and that's how we stay connected, us brokenhearted humans.