TEREZUM

As I walked on the forest path I was thinking about the human soul. The more I thought about it the more similarities I could feel that it has with the trails that we often step on in the woods.

Maybe plants and tiny emergent sprouts of grass can feel pain. We can’t ask them and find out the truth. But with the soul…I think I speak for many people when I say that having someone step callously inside of it can feel extremely hurtful.

Have you noticed that the places where no one steps on are filled with wild flowers and vegetation? The more beaten a path is the more bleak and sterile it becomes. You can rarely see a flower or some grass. The soil has hardened and almost no one feels bad for walking there. On the contrary, in the “virgin” places, some of us can experience a sense of guilt for stepping on those beautiful flowers while others might feel victorious for conquering that piece of land. It all depends on the appreciation and respect one carries for the place they are stepping on. The irony of it all is that the more beaten a path is the more love it requires and demands, something that an ignorant observer might ignore, thinking that as long as it looks so dull and bleak it is not worth investing into it anymore…

If we extrapolate the whole matter to the human soul, we would come to some interesting conclusions. We, unlike the forest, have the option to choose who will come inside our garden and where will that person be allowed to walk. If we allow too many people inside our heart, too fast, without knowing their character, we risk damage. We no longer have the energy to restore our beaten path and redeem our lost lush spiritual bliss. Just like a beaten up trail, we are bleak, void, hollow. The intruders took all of our energy, stepped on all that we have planted. Some people, in a delusional desperate attempt to restore their inner bloom, allow another person after another person, just in the hopes that someone will help. Unfortunately that proves to be even more damaging. You have to enclose the space, to put a fence and allow the inner healing to happen. Our inner garden is no different than a forest path. The more we allow strangers to step on it, the more cynical, void of beautiful emotions we become. We become hardened and nothing moves us anymore. We can lose hope in love, friendship, human kindness just because of a handful of grim people on whom we did a very poor evaluation.

Is there any hope for a devastated soul? Yes. It is called boundaries. A remedy which needs solitude and introspection. A forest will always regenerate if someone will enclose it and allow no access. Nature demands its rights and vegetation will soon begin to grow on top of that soil which seemed to promise nothing. We humans have a limited amount of energy. We have to nurture it and give it carefully to a group of selected people. A soul garden has to be always protected by its gardener: us. This requires inner love and the knowledge that what we have inside is well worth the wait and the requirements that we put a non-negociable on when we meet new people. The danger of being too loosey-goosey with our standards is like allowing deforestation for a forest: the damage takes a long time to repair and the lesson will leave a bitter taste when it could have been a lot easier if we would have put a fence around it.

What you love…you protect. This is the mantra that every human being should repeat to oneself everyday while protecting the path to their soul.