They said I shouldn’t be wild-hearted
Because it meant I was uncontrollable.
They said I shouldn’t be wild-hearted
Because it scared them,
And they didn’t understand why–
Why I had to be so different, so restless, so questioning.
Just fit in.
Just be like us.
Just go through life half-heartedly
Like the rest of us do.
But I couldn’t. The cage was utterly life-stifling.
And so I broke free,
I ran along the mountain trails
Dug deeply into the roots of the human soul,
And found something profound, courageous.
See, what they really didn’t understand
Is that being wild-hearted
Is about facing the hardest parts of humanity
–the struggles, the pain, the adversity—
Exploring the vast wilderness of the human soul.
Being wild-hearted means I have survived
The whirlwinds and I am still standing
Because my heart is wild.
For the wild things I’ve seen
Could’ve wrecked a tamer person.
But because I was wild,
I learned to dance while in the storm,
Find the beauty in the pouring rain,
And walk unafraid through
Earth-shattering thunder and lightning.
I learned to live within the terrible elements,
Somehow embracing the torrential truth that life could
Be wondrously beautiful even inside a hurricane.
And because I was so wild-hearted,
I learned to sit with those in their own storms,
When the wailing of the wind grew so loud
That most people ran for shelter.
I learned to put my arms around those raining hearts
And help them know:
You are not alone here,
Here in the great wilderness,
Because I’m here, too,
And I’m not afraid of it anymore.
I’ve been in the wilderness for so long that I live here
With hardly any complaint anymore.
Because I’ve learned that the wild parts, the hardest parts
Aren’t so horrible after all.
The wild parts dig down deeply into your heart and mind and soul,
Planting beautiful seeds inside
That spring up if you let them,
To be a garden of living light.
And the light bursts forth,
And you can’t help but realize just how beautiful it is
To be wild, to be growing, to be living—
Because the wild is an intricate part of your human heart
That the world tries to quench and tear down
Into something acceptable, useless, lifeless.
But being wild-hearted
Means being strong and compassionate.
Being wild-hearted means loving and forgiving
And doing the hard things no matter what
Because a wild heart is strong and unafraid.
Photo by Adobe Stock/Leonid Tit
