Most of us approach love the way we approach a suspiciously cheap Airbnb listing. We zoom in on every photo. We read every review twice. We search for hidden fees and wonder why there are no pictures of the bathroom. We want to know exactly what we are getting into before we book, and we definitely want free cancellation in case the vibe is off.
Love does not come with free cancellation. Love is the non-refundable, no-reviews-available, the-photos-might-be-accurate listing that you book anyway because something in you knows it is worth the risk.
Adam Roa has staked his entire creative life on this gloriously inconvenient truth. As a poet, motivational speaker, filmmaker and host of The Creative Path podcast, Roa has carved out rare territory where art and radical honesty collide, creating work that feels less like content and more like your wisest friend grabbing you by the shoulders and asking why you are still playing it so safe.
His upcoming book Crazy Love is the latest offering from a man who believes that love is not something you fall into but something you choose, repeatedly, especially on the days when Netflix and emotional unavailability sound way easier.
The Beautiful Violence of Becoming
We spend so much energy trying to preserve ourselves. We hold back in relationships to avoid getting hurt. We play it cool because earnestness feels vulnerable. We swipe left on intimacy and wonder why connection feels like a foreign language we used to speak fluently.
Here is the plot twist no one advertises: growth is the actual fountain of youth. Not the kind of growth that looks good on a vision board next to your succulents. The real kind. The kind that requires you to let old versions of yourself die so new ones can finally breathe.
Every new beginning is simultaneously a new ending. The relationship that asks you to open also asks you to release your grip on who you thought you were. The creative project that calls you forward requires you to bury the identity that was too small to hold it. This is not loss. This is alchemy. This is the universe’s way of saying congratulations, you have outgrown another container.
Crazy Love maps this territory with the kind of vulnerability that makes you feel less alone in your own glorious mess. Roa writes about the full spectrum of loving: the electric yes of new connection, the devastating no of things falling apart, and the slow holy work of coming back home to yourself after you were certain you had lost the address.
Image Credit: Adam Roa
The Slow Erosion of Playing It Safe
Here is what no one wants to admit at parties: future pain is guaranteed. You will love and lose. You will open and get hurt. You will build something beautiful and watch it shape-shift into something you did not plan for.
The question is not how to avoid this. The question is whether you will let the fear of it keep you binge-watching your life from the sidelines.
Roa’s work returns to this theme with the persistence of someone who has learned it the hard way and refuses to let the rest of us off the hook. On The Creative Path podcast, he explores these ideas through conversations about creativity, purpose, and what it actually takes to live with your heart open in a world that keeps handing out armor like party favors.
The discussions are honest without being heavy, playful without being shallow. There is a recurring sense that transformation does not have to feel like eating your emotional vegetables. That growth can actually be fun if you stop white-knuckling your way through it and maybe laugh at yourself occasionally.
This is one of Roa’s core beliefs: if it is not playful, it is not sustainable. Joy is not the dessert you earn after finishing your suffering. Joy is what makes the whole meal digestible.
When Control Becomes the Cage
We have been sold a version of empowerment that looks like control. Grip tighter. Optimize more. Manifest harder. Color-code your feelings and schedule your breakthroughs between meetings.
But there is another kind of power that Roa points toward, one that looks suspiciously like letting go. Not the surrender of giving up and moving to a cave. The surrender of giving over. Letting the creativity of life consume you rather than trying to direct every scene like a stressed-out film student.
Playing the game fully, with your whole ridiculous heart, knowing that the ride itself is the point. Nobody gets a trophy at the end for staying safe. You just get a participation ribbon and a lot of what-ifs.
This is what Crazy Love invites readers into: an empowered relationship with impermanence. The book does not promise that love will not break you. It promises that you can survive the breaking and become someone more alive on the other side. Someone who laughs easier. Someone who risks bigger. Someone who stopped waiting for permission.
Roa writes like someone who knows that the alternative to risking heartbreak is not safety. It is numbness wearing a sensible outfit. And numbness, in the end, is just a slower and far more boring kind of dying.
Image Credit: Adam Roa
The Door That Was Never Locked
What would your life look like if you stopped waiting to feel ready? News flash: ready is not coming. Ready is a myth invented by fear to keep you comfortable and slightly disappointed forever.
Adam Roa is not here to give you a roadmap to a pain-free existence. He is here to remind you that the pain is part of the package, and the package is still absolutely worth opening. Even if your hands shake. Especially then.
Crazy Love is for anyone who has ever stood at the edge of something real and felt the pull of retreat. For anyone who suspects that the love they want exists on the other side of the fear they keep avoiding. For anyone ready to stop protecting themselves from life and start participating in it like they actually got an invitation.
The game does not last forever. None of us get unlimited turns. But while you are here, you get to choose: contract or expand, hide or play, fear or love.
Roa’s work keeps pointing toward the same answer: Choose love. Then choose it again. Even when it is inconvenient. Especially then.
Life, after all, is poetry. And you are still writing yours.
Might as well make it interesting.Heartbreak, joy, and everything in between. Crazy Love isn’t just read — it’s experienced. Pick up a copy and feel every word.
