When it's my time to throw the next stone, I'll call you beautiful if I call at all.

This is meant to answer a question.

But I do not know the answer, not really, even though I have been thinking about it and trying not to answer the question with more questions. First of all I do not think I have striven to avoid being hurt because being hurt occasionally seems inevitable when you allow yourself to be vulnerable. And I do not know any alternative to being vulnerable. That kind of resulting pain, though it twists you in the moment, is pain you can live through... and later on it turns into memories that do not hurt at all. Instead they put an interesting frame around your learning and you really rather treasure it. This I know for certain.

But maybe it is simpler than that. Maybe you are asking me about deception in which case there is always the option not to engage in the first place. If you play rough you will get hurt - so don't play? Maybe that's all it means, in which case I am all in favour of sitting out because I do not like to play those kinds of games because I have no skill, offensive or defensive. But that is probably an oversimplification of a very complicated question. I can be insensitive but more often I am oversensitive, both of which may result in hurt feelings, which is never my intent.

The short answer is I do not avoid being hurt, I embrace it and I learn from it.





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