fallen one time too many

.....Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either,

for solitude will also break you with its yearning.

You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth.

You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.

And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death

brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the

apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. 

Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.....

I looked around me....maybe a hundred people, all momentarily or permanently fallen on hard times....  A room full of people who cannot afford a hot meal, here for it. Various nationalities, different stories, different heartbeats, different pains. One woman of my own asks me: are you here now (implying from now on) I say yes and jokingly: you have a problem with that? A few others laugh. I feel they like me. I think its important for them to like me. So its easier to open up, less suspicious and more genuine. A bunch of volunteers around checking that everyone s getting their meal. They also talk to people, the occasional jokes, the occasional chair being pushed to the floor by accident. Some of them are totally out of it. But everyone gets treated the same. 

 because....any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain 

but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.

These people are weak. Each faced with their greatest weakness, they re far from gathering their strength to fight them.  Its rare that they eventually do, and get better.  And I m thinking : not everyone has the strength to get up...or keep getting up. I feel for them. I pray for them. I wish I can tell them what they need to hear....to some extent, they all need the same thing. Hope, something or someone to believe in. A ray of sunshine. A good word. A hug.

When there is no enemy within,

the enemies outside cannot hurt you

For a while I m thinking of myself. I m mostly critical. I believe that anything I can do, so everyone else. I have to remember I did not walk in their shoes. I keep forgetting the stuff I cannot do myself. 

But that's mainly because I m hard on myself most of the time too. I have fallen many times, still arrogant enough to think I will not fall again. "this would not happen to me" But bad staff does happen, people get unlucky no matter how careful they are. You can't be careful and right all the times, and surely I cannot either. But I choose to believe I can. Maybe this is the secret that keeps me going. Its inside me and no matter how much pain or tears I ll have in life, I ll pick myself up and believe I m above it all. I m at peace with my broken heart. But I doubt many of the people in this room are.....