Love, Purity, and Strength

I wrote this post about ten billion years ago. Though I love Casey O'Connell's artwork, after I had looked at this picture for a while, I started analyzing it and this is what I thought. I guess you could say there is some bitterness and pain in there, but there's also the realization that in the end, a pure heart is a strength not to be underestimated.

Casey O'Connell's "Wish You Were Here"

Look how she has forgotten the crazy distractions of life that surround her. How she is holding on to him for dear life. How she cherishes him and has smothered him with kisses. See how she has dressed up cute and brushed her hair for him.

But she's got her eyes closed. She doesn't realize that he's distracted. That he's looking elsewhere.

Shame on her, society would say. She should have known someone who would wear jail stripe shirts was a con artist and not worth breaking her heart over. She should have known that men get distracted in such a colorful environment. She should have had her eyes open. But she thought she did.


It's one thing to experience a break-up where you can say that you at least both had a great time while it lasted, but it's a completely different thing to realize that you were never loved all along. That you were used. That you fell for it. That your conscious decision to love no matter what made you one of those women you'd always criticized--the women who are abused by their boyfriends or husbands but who still want to be with them.

Shame on him, I say. Shame on him for purposely deceiving, for acting the ideal but for hiding what good is in him. Shame on him for hurting the pure in heart. Or trying to. Because when he picked the pure in heart to hurt, what he didn't realize is how strong that purity makes one; in the end, despite his indifference to reproach, he is really just hurting his own soul.

Because she--she walked towards the light.