Broken

Update for Thursday, September 6, 2007: I'm very pleased with how this entry turned out, so I've decided to leave it up for today as well. Until next week... hope you enjoy.

All people feel broken at certain points during their lives. To not feel broken is to lie to oneself or to live a terribly safe, sterile existence. I believe being broken is one of the fundamental aspects of life. On its face, it is not something I take comfort in, but I've grown to respect the fact that it should be acknowledged and accepted. Again, this realization doesn't make anything easier. Quite frankly, it is just one of the sucky things you learn about growing up. However, if each one of us did not break in some way, there would be many things in our lives we would not need and thus many things we would not have.

There are many ways to be broken. People make poor decisions or have lapses in judgment or possess character flaws, and those in turn affect reputation. Many live under strained financial situations or find themselves jobless, which hurts stable finances. Others suffer in health. Mentally or physically, they could have lifelong issues from birth or freak accidents or late developing diseases. Even more people see relationships with loved ones end or change. Tons of people face some or all of the issues I've mentioned, others face only one, and some face other issues I didn't list. For other people, the simple knowledge of living the aforementioned safe, sterile existence is what breaks them.

In all these situations, a piece or all of a person is broken. Time assures us that they will never be the same. And often, they cannot be fixed, in whole or in part. What do we do with these broken pieces? In a way, the broken pieces add up to a life. As a group, we respond to this suffering, this brokenness, in two ways.

The oft quoted teaching that suffering brings about compassion is true, in my experience. One way we respond to being broken is through communal means. The compassion from a person's surrounding community can be crucial in their response. This includes friends, family, organizations, churches, charities, and schools. If I may be naïvely optimistic for a moment, we as a society even have compassion-based careers. Nurses & doctors, teachers, and even holy men are just a few examples. All of these communal support systems originate from one group: our loved ones. That is precisely what the communal response to suffering does. It allows us, more fully, to love and be loved.

There is another type of response to brokenness, and that is through personal means. You can pick your own "struggle-through-adversity" cliché. They all apply. You learn a lot about yourself when you stare down that barrel. All the mentoring in the world can only provide you with the tools for character building, actual character can only be made by you. Your personal response to your own suffering is the best means to that end. Again, brokenness provides a vehicle. In the case of the personal response, it allows us to see who we are and to build ourselves into what we want to be.

Although the broken pieces often cannot be fixed, we can still heal. There will be scars and baggage left along the way, but ultimately one of the main things life is about is the cycle of brokenness, response, and healing. It is a struggle with many twists and turns, and no positive guarantees, but it has to be. It certainly is not always the way we want, but the personal and communal responses help us heal and some way, somehow, we move on.

This healing can hopefully help our situations. If a relationship ends, perhaps healing helps us to understand why. If it changes, healing allows us to grow and find a new role and accept that. For those with health concerns, maybe healing is reflected in an improvement of the condition. Maybe it isn't, and instead we find a way to make peace with it. As far as character goes, healing gives us a direct path to making ourselves better. None of these processes is easy. All of it involves the awareness that parts of growing up suck. However, I know I wouldn't have any of the things I have without my personal response to brokenness and the support of the people who love me & the people I love.

It's a wonderfully awful, amazing, dangerous, down-and-dirty, beautiful, exciting, suffering-riddled, shitty, character-building, pleasure-filled, painful, lovely life!


Editor's note: sorry for another posting delay. Please send any questions, comments, or suggestions to Southern California Edison.