Unwritten Paths

 A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.

― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

 The Hearts We Don’t Choose

There is a sorrow—quiet, almost imperceptible—that settles into our bones when we begin to realize

 one of the cruelest truths of being human: we do not get to choose our own hearts.

This is not a dramatic tragedy that unfolds in a single moment. It is a slow, aching understanding that 

creeps into us over time, often after repeated disappointments—after loving the wrong people, craving 

what harms us and failing to feel what we know we should.

We cannot simply our hearts into submission. We cannot force desire to align with logic. We know 

what’s “good for us,” but knowing is not the same as wanting. We read the books, take the advice, 

follow the rules—and yet we still yearn for the things that ruin us, love the people who do not love us 

back, and stay in places that drain the soul.

How much easier life would be if we could choose to fall in love with someone kind. If we could 

choose to stop loving the ones who have long since stopped choosing us. If we could make our hearts 

beat for healing, not self-destruction. But the heart has a will of its own, ancient and untamed. It 

wanders, resists, rebels.

And maybe this is why sorrow grows alongside self-awareness. Because once we begin to see this inner 

chaos for what it is, we stop blaming others—and start grieving ourselves. The person we were 

supposed to become. The rationality we thought we had. The goodness we expected to feel.

We don't get to choose the people we are. Not entirely. Not in the way we imagine. We can try to shape 

ourselves, heal, grow, evolve—and we must—but at our core, there will always be parts of us that 

remain raw, tender, and ungovernable.

And so perhaps the truest form of strength is not in mastering the heart but in holding it gently—

acknowledging its chaos without shame. Loving what is wild inside us, even as we walk toward what is 

right. Forgiving ourselves for the longing, the missteps, the love that wouldn't die even when it should 

have.

There is sorrow in this. Yes. But also, grace. Because the heart we didn’t choose is still ours—and it’s 

trying, in its own strange way, to lead us home.