Horizons As Big As Our Hearts

What are the edges of your love? Not boundaries, mind you, but edges. When I think of boundary I think of a discrete stop, beyond which a thing cannot go. "Edge" to me speaks of a condition less static, more fluid and less sharp.

A barbed wire fence is a boundary. A tide line is an edge. Does that make sense? The wire is meant to keep something out, or keep something in. Where the water meets the shore is interplay and mingling of sea, sand and air. Fences are imposed by an outside order. Tide lines arise from organic circumstance.

I wonder if it is the same with love. It saddens me to think of love as something that requires capture and containment in order to flourish. Who would want their heart brought to rest upon rusty wire, held in place only to bleed out onto an uncaring earth? Would it not be grander, more humane and satisfying to alight upon the shored from the curl of a wave, delighting in sun and spray?

These things occurred to me while considering if the love within us is possessed of a horizon. This thought a random bit of mental flotsam, conjured up by the quantum associations of conversations touching on love. The image in my head one of standing on deck with my eyes on the horizon, and wondering just how far away it could be.

The idea stuck with me, I suppose because oceans and love have fascinated me for years. Fascinated and spooked me simultaneously, as I always have been when surrounded by vastness I cannot fully comprehend. Deep ocean, vast hearts. I admire the one and crave the other, yet am fearful of being swallowed whole by both. Ultimately how big can they be and we survive their mysterious embraces? 

As a result of this anxious meditation I have a better understanding of my own concerns. For the longest time I have held in my heart that in order for it to love, it had to have limits to that love; if it did not, the heart would be lost, swept away and identity dissolved. It is true that love to some degree requires the giving up of ego, an unsettling but necessary act that can lead to deep understanding.

Clinging to ego can be limiting, however. One perhaps may never know the true depths and breadths of love if one never lets go. This is a notion that has crept up on me, and now refuses to go away. Because I wonder, how much love have I missed because I was afraid of that which appears to be without limits? How much love could it be possible for me to receive if my heart became as an ocean?

It has been suggested to me that the amount is infinite. What is required is the removal of those limits imposed by the ego. Fear is yet another attachment that prevents us from opening ourselves up to love.

The greater the distance to the horizon of love, the larger the sphere of our hearts, but this is less important than defining that horizon as boundary or edge. Boundaries allow for control, but perhaps at the expense of growth. Edges allow more space for growth. Love needs edges. Love needs horizons as big as our hearts.