We need to be willing to accept the need for change in the way we see ourselves and the way we behave towards others.

Sometimes change comes not because we set out to x ourselves, or repair our relation to the living; sometimes we change most when we repair our relation to the lost, the forgotten, the dead.

We hesitate, in the face of change, because change is loss. But if we don’t accept some loss – for Tamitha, the loss of her baby photos – we can lose everything.

We, therefore, become afraid to hear the other person’s thoughts because to consider them would be, we feel, to betray our deepest selves. So we make sure that no idea can develop in either of us that does not fit our certainty of who we are and who they are. We stop them. We interrupt.

While heartbreak is the early step on the path to equanimity, fear is the stumbling block leading to the sin of inaction. Fearing the dark rides of the Coney Island of the mind, we choose not to act. Fearing Paris, we stay close to home. Fearing broken skis, failed businesses, and the scars that come from skinned knees, we stay small—listening more to our Loyal Soldier’s fear-filled and protective whispered warnings than to the quickening thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump of a heart that knows how it’s meant to be.