Holding the Gun

"There is a love so deeply rooted in purpose that even the wound cannot make it withdraw."

Devotion can sometimes be radical. To stand beside someone, protect them, carry their secrets, take a bullet for them, even when they are the one holding the gun. There is something almost incomprehensible about that kind of love because it runs against one of our deepest instincts: preserve the self. Walk away from what hurts. Protect what is ours. But sometimes love seems to answer to something deeper. A calling. A choice made somewhere beneath calculation. The feeling that love is not simply something we do, but something our own soul has decided it must remain faithful to. Maybe that is what makes unconditional love so powerful and so frightening. There is no guarantee that it will protect us. No promise that it will be returned. At its furthest edge, it may even ask something of us that self-preservation would never choose. And still, something within us says: love anyway.