“Tears are the holy water from our deep place of loving.”
I have been thinking a lot about tears lately. These words struck me deeply when I first read them, and they have stayed with me ever since. I think too many of us in our world today are afraid to care, afraid to allow our hearts to open to that deep place of loving, afraid to commit ourselves to more than a superficial relationship with most people in our lives.
How many people do YOU love from that deep place?
Although we can experience the precious blessing of tears of joy when something touches us deeply, most of the time our tears come from a place of deepest pain. And our society today tells us to avoid pain at all costs. Therefore, we allow ourselves to become emotionally numb, robots going through the motions of life. We use our busyness as an excuse to bury our feelings. Even thousands of years ago, Socrates warned, “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” My belief is that until we truly allow ourselves to FEEL, we can never experience the fullness of life.
These last five years have been a time of great pain and sadness in my life, and at times, all I prayed for was that the hurt and loneliness would just go away. And yet as I look back, I realize the gift those tears represented: I HAD THE COURAGE TO LOVE FROM THE DEEPEST PLACE OF MY BEING.
Kahlil Gibran wrote years ago in The Prophet that the deeper sorrow carves into our being, we have that much more capacity to experience joy. Our tears, then, become an expression of who we are and how much we’ve risked opening our hearts to others.
How deeply do you allow yourself to love?
Holy water is water that has been blessed. As tears come because of our deepest caring, those tears, too, are blessed. WE ARE ALIVE. WE CAN FEEL. WE CARE.
Don’t hold back your tears, but rather give yourself permission to take the risk of freely opening your heart. Yes, you will experience pain and heartache, loneliness and disillusionment and sorrow, but you will also experience a depth of love and caring and joy that will ultimately transcend the pain.
I truly believe that to love and have been loved at that deepest place is the greatest blessing we can either give or receive in this life on Earth.
Tears of joy and
Tears of pain…….
Tears = Holy Water
© Barbara Glanz Communications. All Rights Reserved.
Barbara Glanz Biography
A member of the prestigious Speaker Hall of Fame and one of fewer than 700 Certified Speaking Professionals worldwide, Barbara Glanz, CSP, CPAE, works with organizations to improve morale, retention and service and with people who want to rediscover the joy in their work and in their lives. She is the first speaker on record to have spoken on all 7 continents and in all 50 states. Known as "the business speaker who speaks to your heart as well as to your head," Barbara is the author of twelve books including The Simple Truths of Service Inspired by Johnny the Bagger®, CARE Packages for the Workplace, and 180 Ways to Spread Contagious Enthusiasm™. Voted "best keynote presenter you have heard or used" by Meetings & Conventions Magazine, Barbara uses her Master’s degree in Adult Learning to design programs that cause behavior change. She lives and breathes her personal motto: “Spreading Contagious Enthusiasm™” and can be reached at bglanz@barbaraglanz.com and www.barbaraglanz.com.
