Love is not without pain.
In fact, to know love is to know pain.
To love is to feel loss, grief, and heartache.
What is the alternative?
To live a life without feeling, without caring, and without vulnerability?
What kind of life is that?
Love so deeply that it has the potential to destroy you and live so fully that it’s worth it when it does.
LOVE DEEPLY LIVE FULLY
By Robert Van Valkenburgh
Meditations of a Gentle Warrior
To read my longer writing, subscribe at robertvanvalkenburgh.com
Sometimes you have to decide whether you want to do your best work or get an A on the test.
There may be overlap, but these goals are often at odds with each other.
To do your best work requires courage and vulnerability.
It means putting your heart on the line, giving your all, and risking criticism, failure, and embarrasment.
To get an A on the test, however, simply requires that you study and do what is asked of you.
Getting an A means doing what you must, taking no chances, and conforming to the demands of the test.
Before starting your work, make sure you know what your end goal is because that will determine whether you should put yourself into it or simply complete the task at hand.
PASSING THE TEST
By Robert Van Valkenburgh
Meditations of a Gentle Warrior
To read my longer writing, subscribe at robertvanvalkenburgh.com
There is no way to do great work without taking risks.
But risks are, well, risky.
Things may not work out.
Failure is always an option.
In spite of this, the goal is not to avoid risks, but to take risks that you can live with.
Take risks you can recover from, that you can learn from, and that have an upside, even in loss.
In this way, the risks you take become the path of the great work you seek to do.
Challenge yourself.
Face that which frightens you.
Lean into it.
Life is going to happen.
Safety is an illusion.
No one makes it out alive.
It is better to truly live while you have the chance than to die every day from a fear of failure.
You do not need to know what you are doing in order to do something great.
Many amazing things have been created from nothing more than a single idea.
A plan is optional, but ideas are essential.
You can always devise a plan later, but ideas are transient and scarce.
The goal, then, is not to have the best plan, but to have the best idea.
This likely means having a lot of bad ideas as well.
You will not know which ideas are good and which are bad, however, without testing them out, without following through on them, and without being willing to fail.
Take risks, be playful, and try new things.
Leave the planning for later.
But never let a good plan get in the way of a great idea.
Meditations on God 