I walk around with my heart pretty much wide open.
It is one of the things I love most about the way I live today.
The more I have learned to come home to myself, the more I have learned to live from my heart rather than allowing my mind—with all its fears, worries, judgments, and endless commentary—to run the show.
I love people.
I love connecting with them.
I love being open.
But several years ago, a woman taught me something I hadn’t fully understood.
An open heart needs a security system.
For about a month, I had to visit a particular place of business several times.
The first time I went there, the woman I needed to deal with seemed to dislike me almost immediately.
I had no idea why.
And then she began raging at me.
Not simply being unfriendly or impatient.
Raging.
I was flabbergasted.
I did what I needed to do regarding the business at hand, and then I left.
But I was deeply disturbed by the encounter.
It wasn’t exactly that I took what she said personally. I wasn’t going home thinking, Maybe she’s right about me.
It was something different.
My heart had been hit.
I had walked into that place completely open, as I normally do, and suddenly I had been blasted with an enormous amount of anger and hostility that I hadn’t expected.
And I didn’t know what to do with it.
I couldn’t sleep.
I kept replaying the encounter in my mind.
What happened?
Why was she so angry?
What had I done?
Could I have handled it differently?
A week later, I had to go back.
This time, she had her boyfriend there, and he yelled at me too.
I left almost in tears.
Another woman happened to be getting out of her car and saw how upset I was.
I remember wanting so badly to reason things out with the woman inside.
Surely if we could just talk…
Surely I could explain…
Surely we could figure out what had gone wrong…
But she wasn’t interested.
I had to return to that business two more times.
Both times, she saw me arriving in the parking lot and rushed to lock the door so I couldn’t come inside.
It took me a couple of weeks to recover emotionally from that series of encounters.
But eventually I realized that the experience had given me an important lesson.
Protecting Your Heart Is Not the Same as Closing It
When we begin living more from our hearts, something beautiful happens.
We become more open.
More receptive.
More connected.
But openness also makes us vulnerable.
For a while, I think I unconsciously believed that living with an open heart meant allowing whatever came toward me to enter.
It doesn’t.
An open heart can have boundaries.
In fact, perhaps our hearts can remain truly open because they have boundaries.
Think about your home.
A good security system doesn’t require you to turn your house into a fortress.
You can open the windows.
You can sit on the porch.
You can invite people inside.
You can enjoy your garden and wave to your neighbors.
You don’t have to build a ten-foot concrete wall around the property because somebody once behaved badly.
But…
you don’t hand everybody the key.
I’ve learned to do the same thing with my heart.
First, I Look at Myself
Today, when someone behaves toward me in a way that feels deliberately hurtful, I first look inward.
I ask myself:
Did I do something?
Did I say something?
Is there something here that I need to take responsibility for?
Because protecting my heart doesn’t mean automatically deciding that I’m right and the other person is wrong.
If I contributed to the situation, I want to know.
If I need to apologize, I will.
If I need to make something right, I will.
But if I look honestly at myself and realize that this isn’t mine?
Then I leave it where it belongs.
With them.
People behave the way they do for their own reasons.
Perhaps I triggered something.
Perhaps I reminded them of someone.
Perhaps something about me reflected something they didn’t want to see.
Perhaps they were carrying pain I knew absolutely nothing about.
Or perhaps none of those things were true.
I don’t know.
And that may be one of the most important things I’ve learned:
I don’t need to know.
I Don’t Take the Bait
This has taken practice.
Lots of it.
When someone tries to hurt me, my mind may still want to jump into action.
Explain yourself!
Make them understand!
Fix this!
Defend yourself!
But more and more, I can recognize the invitation and decline it.
I don’t have to convince someone that I’m a good person.
I don’t have to change their opinion of me.
I don’t have to understand why they’re behaving the way they are.
I don’t have to repair something I didn’t break.
And I don’t have to carry the emotional consequences of choices somebody else is making.
I let them carry the responsibility for their behavior.
That is part of my heart’s security system.
And Then I Walk Away
But there is another part that matters just as much to me.
I don’t want protecting my heart to turn into hardening my heart.
I don’t want someone else’s anger to become my anger.
I don’t want their bitterness to become mine.
I don’t want to walk away carrying resentment and replaying the incident for the next three weeks.
That would still give them power over my inner world.
So I walk away.
And as best I can…
I wish them well in my beautiful heart.
That doesn’t mean I invite them back in.
It doesn’t mean I excuse abusive behavior.
It doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be consequences.
It simply means:
You may not come into my inner home behaving this way.
But I don’t need to hate you while I close the gate.
There is tremendous freedom in that.
My Heart Knows
I’m getting better at this.
I still get hurt sometimes.
I’m human.
My security system doesn’t always sound the alarm quickly enough. Sometimes something gets through the gate before I realize what has happened.
But I notice sooner now.
I come back to myself sooner.
And I remind myself:
Is this mine?
If it is, I take responsibility for it.
If it isn’t, I don’t pick it up.
I am learning to stay in my power, unwilling to give it away to anyone, for any reason.
And through it all, my heart can remain open.
Because my heart knows something my frightened mind sometimes forgets.
Not everything directed at me is about me.
Not everything offered to me needs to be received.
Not every battle requires my participation.
And not everyone needs a key to my heart.
Live with your heart wide open.
Just remember to install a good security system. ❤️