And you followed the link here. What, precisely, did you expect?

I'll avoid profound statements about assumptions and expectations, and move on. We're all mature adults here. Or at least, we'd like to think we are.

But stop and think a moment...did you merely take the plunge, stumbling in here in the midst of your travels, or were you...adventuring?

Did you come here to learn, or simply to be entertained, to be upvoted, to gain experience, to be appreciated?

Take your heart out and examine it for a moment. No, not that ratty thing on your sleeve...your heart. The center of your passion, that thing which drives you on, which might, someday, be the font of your passions... place it, still or beating, in the palm of your hands.

Flip it over, maybe. Examine it. Not much, eh?

Well, you haven't been feeding it, have you. You do know what hearts feed on, don't you?

Oh my, another one. They never do pay attention during the important bits.

The heart, my dear, is a delicate thing. It feeds on hope, and wonder, and endearment. It appreciates quality, and honesty, and openness. It seeks to grow.

Have you been hiding it? Or maybe just dunking it in temporal pleasures. Or letting it rest on your sleeve...

Step back out the door for a moment. Take a collective deep breath. Let all of the expectations, the worries over who noded what, who voted what, just flow away. They don't matter. None of it does. Nothing, except what feeds your heart.

Let it rest there, in your chest. Maybe it's a heavy lump, so burdened with desires and fears and knowledge that it doesn't know which way to twitch. Maybe it's more ash than solid, burned on the pyre of self-discovery and wild-oat-sewing.

It doesn't really matter. Listen, for a moment, to your heart.

To that slow beat. That note, that rhythm...looking always for another piece of home.

This doorway...does this look like home? Even a shadow of it would be welcome...it's been a long time, hasn't it?

How about the doormat? The scuff marks around the doorframe. Certainly a well used portal.

Use it well. What do you hear, feel, imagine, as you prepare to enter? What lies behind, beyond this door?

Think again. Then clear it all away. Take one deep breath...

And a chance. To wonder, to laugh...to expand your horizons. To live one gleam brighter.

A name is merely a label. But the content...your heart needs to be fed. Open wide...

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