To Love Less is to Live Less

"Even suffering is part of the truth of our life. Thus, trying to shield the youngest from every difficulty and experience of suffering, we risk creating, despite our good intentions, fragile persons of little generosity: The capacity to love, in fact, corresponds to the capacity to suffer, and to suffer together."

~ Pope Benedict XVI

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to 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."

- C. S. Lewis

"The great project of the Enlightenment is to separate love and sacrifice, but it cannot be done. To love in a fallen world means to suffer."

- Fr. Ron Gillis

Ah, all so true. The trick is learning who one is, and isn't, and what one can and cannot do, humanly speaking, so that one can protect oneself from abuse without forgetting to let down the barriers and love. The hard part is when we have to protect ourselves from loved ones.