Love Is Courageous, Walls Are Cowardly

Love is courageous. But not typically in the ways that we imagine it to be. We like to think of courageous love as this loud, overwhelming, sweeping force. Something that can be seen and heard from miles away. Something with a heart-pounding soundtrack and slow-motion movement and the most beautiful lighting that there could be.

But really, love is courageous in its quiet strength, in its selfless choices, in its subtle but unwavering loyalty.

Big love happens in little moments, shared between two people who often aren’t even aware of the significance until much later on.

Courageous love happens in ordinary, unremarkable places. Mountaintops and firework backdrops are surely appealing. But often, the little moments you remember with the love of your life happen in the grocery aisle. On the sidewalk. On your friend’s porch. In a couple of uncomfortable airplane seats. At a stoplight. Moments of uncontainable laughter or shared comfort or pure, ordinary togetherness.

These things – good morning kisses, hand squeezes, unwavering eye contact, easy smiles, whispered reassurances – are tiny things, until you realize that they are the very building blocks that make up your entire relationship.

This is how love is courageous. In its tininess. Not its splendor.

It is walls that are cowardly. The barriers we put up to protect ourselves from these small, innocent moments of joy. The way we close ourselves off to any chance of pain, any chance of vulnerability, any chance that we’ll have to trust our heart in the hands of anyone but ourselves. That is not strategy, nor shrewdness.

It is just cowardice. 

Maybe we’ll never be hurt this way. Maybe we’ll never be humiliated or shattered. Maybe keeping our hearts to ourselves will protect us from becoming like the millions of broken hearts that have come before us.

But we’ll also never feel the incredible, overwhelming force of joy that comes from such minuscule, everyday moments. We’ll never feel the pure release that comes from connecting wholeheartedly with another soul. We’ll never get the opportunity to understand what it feels like to put another living being’s happiness and safety and life above our own, how little our own satisfaction matters when we care about something outside of ourselves.

Walls are cowardly. Walls are death.

But courageous love? It can turn a shared look in an ordinary place into one of the greatest feelings of all time.