we are what remains after everything we are not*
(Maria Popova)

What we are beneath the surface of our lives is the gift we bring to others.  In the moment of giving, we are making ourselves the most vulnerable.  As John O’Donohue suggests:

‘Vulnerability risks hurt, disappointment and failure.’^

Like the proverbial iceberg, more is hidden than visible in our lives, even to ourselves but especially to one another.  It takes to time and, yes vulnerability again, for it to be seen:

‘The visible world is an active doorway to the invisible world and the invisible world is much larger than the visible.’**

Until then, we are more misunderstood than understood.

Our risk is always to be understood.

(*From Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: Bear and Wolf: A Tender Illustrated Fable of Walking Side by Side in Otherness.)
(**From Richard Rohr’s Eager to Love.)
(^From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)