hockey pants of the heart

Spend some time with me and eventually you'll hear me blurt out what's become my personal motto: Aim high, fall hard. I usually say it half-jokingly, but it's too true to laugh off entirely. It's my modus operandi. I think, muse, calculate, ponder, and evaluate, set my sights and then, LEAP! I decide on a lofty goal and give it my best, my all. Sometimes I am rewarded with great joy-- like when I land the jump and find my risk-taking rewarded with, for example, a great vocation-- and sometimes the reward is just painful.

I'm trying to break this aim-high-fall-hard M.O. in the dating realm, an area where the reward is, more often than not, a broken heart. Years ago my dear friend, J, cautioned me to wear "the hockey pants of the heart." I'd just learned how to snowboard with the benefit of extra-padding in the hockey pants I wore over my snow pants. J drew my attention to the potential benefit of such 'padding' in matters of the heart. The advice is several years old, but I think I might finally be getting the hang of it. Today, in a conversation I did NOT initiate, a guy I've seen a few times in the last month (Spark Guy) wanted to talk about expectations, to make sure we were on the same page. We were. We're seeing other people, taking it slow, getting to know one another, not rushing into anything. It was oddly satisfying to find that I'd managed to keep my heart from leaping head over heels in spite of the great attraction. I'm a bit proud of myself, actually. And yet...

Is it possible that by ditching "aim high, fall hard" I might not be aiming high enough? In my desire to give up the roller coaster ride-- the euphoria and the crash, the butterflies and the tears, the romance and the heartache-- am I settling? Dare I hope that I can someday have my feet planted firmly on the ground AND have my head in the clouds?

Good questions. For the moment, though, I think I want to bask in the satisfaction of the serious, heartfelt, honest, tender and strangely non-emotional conversation I had today with Spark Guy. We'd just spent over two hours walking and running and playing on the tidal flats at the Spanish Banks. We perched on a beached log, sitting face to face, sometimes holding hands. Among other things, he said that he finds my self-confidence seriously attractive. The tide was coming in.