Soft hearts (people) need protection.. need protection

So, my husband and I used to be friends for a long time before getting married. We first met when we were in the university and became very good friends. It’s just a weird combination.

Growing up in a multicultural background, he is an outgoing extroverted guy with a fun outlook on everything in life. I was (at that time) an empath who had a hard shell to protect myself from everything (including joy and sweetness) in life. He is a life of the party. He generally has a big bright smile on his face through almost every situation in life. And if you look at his childhood photo album, you will see him, as a kid, smiling and laughing loudly in every photo. It seems like he is the soul who said “YAS, I got to do something fun in this lifetime again” Like a kid who exploded with energy to explore this world, the fullness of life. While looking at my childhood photo album, I saw the soul who said “Oooh, I’m back here on earth again…?!”

And honestly, it is still a very weird combo. I believe many couples shared something like this as well.

Anyway, so, we have many friends in common as we basically grew up together as friends before.

One time, we met a friend whom we haven’t met in an almost one-year time. Super cool friend! We’re very looking forward to meeting after being away from each other for a while.

We met a friend on that day. We had dinner, catching up with him and everything. It was like any normal catching-up thing. But, somehow, it felt so off in my heart. Like there was something wrong happen.

I spent the next couple of days (even a week) to figure out what exactly went wrong. Where does this feeling come from? It’s just feeling so weird in my heart.

At first, I felt disappointed in myself. On that day, I hadn’t expressed my authentic self at all. I didn’t speak from the heart at all. I reverted to the old me who lived life solely from the mind and did everything 1,2,3,4 from the mind. I was being so harsh on myself why I went through so much transformation, and I still reverted to the old mechanism.

And one moment, I was very sad thinking that my relationship with this friend had changed into a worse place.

But I also noticed that my husband's behaviour on that day was also a little bit strange from what I’d normally seen. It seems that he also became more speaking from the mind as well, which is usually not the case He’s the type of person who naturally is able to express directly from his heart in almost every situation since we first met. He rarely has any shell on his heart.

I still remember the hug that our friend gave as a greeting and a farewell. It was strange. It was very loose. I felt that it was ‘lifeless’, ‘soulless’.

I remember how every time I met this friend, we always had a great fulfilling conversation. But it’s not this time. It felt like I wasn’t being ‘heard’ at all and I felt the loneliness crept inside my heart at that time like an ice starting to cover up my heart. So, I froze. I stunned. I was shocked.

What’s going on here?

I knew from the fact that he had been working very very hard lately. On that day, he even had unexpected extra work to do on his holiday. So, I do understand that his soul must be super weary. He was thinking of changing the job because it was taking space way too much in his life.

And believe me, I knew how talking to people who just finished off from work can be the most stuck-in-the-head convo ever. I even did it when I was on the traditional path.

It seems that this was the answer I was looking for. But I then asked myself, “So, from now on what kind of relationship you’re looking for?” “What exactly do you look for in a relationship from now on?”

I took some time to figure it out. I spent my time in bed a couple of days recovering from the flu, so I had so much time to reflect.

And the answer I’ve found is the word ‘soft heart’

The word soft heart recently stuck in my head because of Aurora’s song called ‘The Blade’ from ‘What Happened to the Heart’ album

There is the verse.

Soft hearts need protection, need protection

Soft hearts need protection, need protection

I am not sure about Aurora’s original intended meaning, but my interpretation is that people with soft hearts should be protected because they are so rare in this world.

I then remembered the conversation that I had with another friend from Canada. He asked, “What’s your favourite part/highlights from travelling around in the UK”.

I answered that I definitely loved the part where I got to connect with local people. Many of them were very friendly and their behaviors were so sweet. The places themselves were great. But the core element that added to it was this human connection, the real-life connection that I believe we all deeply yearn for. The small talk that brightened up my day. Just two human beings having fun without any hidden agenda, without trying to get it somewhere is what I yearned for.

And I believe that we are all yearning for that deep down inside. We have been separated, feeling lonely and isolated in life no matter how many friends we had on Facebook. I believe that by returning to each other. Returning to humanity. Connect with each other from the heart and soul level. Knowing that we have each other all along would be the key to filling that void inside all of our hearts. And much of the rage, grief, pain, loneliness and anger in the world will be decreased. I believe that most of those stemmed from the yearning to reconnect back to the sacred, God, Great Mother (feel free to use the word that feels right to you here), Mother Earth, Mother Nature, ourselves, and the humanity that already exists everywhere on this earth.

And I still remember how a group of friends I met in Edinburgh, Scotland made me feel ‘being really heard’ for the first time in my life because they truly connect with me from their heart space. Also, it was at the same time that my heart was open enough to be able to receive that. (I believe that before that incident, there were so many people in my life who tried to connect with me from their heart space, but I wasn’t in the position ready enough to receive it) I felt so held by them and I will be forever grateful for that.

So, I believe that soft heart was something that I was yearning to see from that friend on that day. I was looking to connect with him on that day from the place of softheart. But it wasn’t that day. So, I, an empath who used the shell to cover my heart for almost all of my life, just resorted back to the same old mode of coping mechanism because I wasn’t feeling safe. Why was I feeling unsafe? Because now since my heart has opened wider than before, it is easier for me to detect which person speaks from the head or the heart. I even found many books I used to love uninteresting instantly because the majority of the words written on those pages were just mind-based. Again, it wasn’t a blame game saying that the heart is superior, and the mind is inferior. I believe that everything has to go together so it can achieve balance; mind, heart, soul, body etc. It’s just that now at this moment in time, I resonate with bringing hearts more into the conversation in our mind-based society and it feels more authentic to me at the deeper level, my soul. And when the conversation started to be solely from the mind, without feelings, emotions, or heart in it. I felt disconnected from those words without knowing. I just knew that something was off here. I became so scared that I unconsciously resorted back to the old habit of covering a shell on my heart to protect myself and spoke from that place. Therefore, the conversation even became more mind-based which I found uninteresting and lifeless in the end.

Now that I realize these points, I promise to myself to maintain my stance, ground myself in my energy, in my light, drop into the heart space and speak from that place as much as I can no matter what the energy that other people projected out in our conversation. Of course, it’s not always going to be purely from the heart 24/7. We’re still human. There’ll certainly be the downtime or the time when our inner well running low and we use the mind just to get by. But I’ll try my best. I believe most people are just empaths like me who absorb energy in the air easily and if I manage to send my energy from the heart, they automatically be able to tap into the heart and speak from there as well.

If I want more relationships with soft-hearted people, I might as well bring my soft heart into many conversations as much as I can.