THE BREAKS MAKE US
I woke to an image this morning of this extraordinary wall with a note that read
A wall with stories to tell.
I started thinking about how often as humans we strive for an impossible sense of perfection,
To build these perfect walls, and walk paths that are all neat and tidy. Or at least present that way.
And how self punitive we can be when we create mess or end up breaking down our own constructed walls
In Chinese the word for perfection is the same as satisfied. And since everything in the Universe is unfinished, perhaps a more attainable goal orientation is satisfaction. When do you feel satisfied? When do you feel you have brought something to completion?
Because inevitably everything can be broken down again into parts and put back together in new ways.
But when we break we also begin at that very moment to rebuild too. We are broken and opened simultaneously.
They have a beautiful ancient Chinese character for break which is Dǎ 打. It's the image of a person engaged with an activity or certain occupation of the hand. This character, whilst it can mean to beat or break, to strike or smash, it's also used for knit, construct and build. Both polarities always exist within words, within everything. And the biggest freedom we ever find is in choosing which polarity to attend to.
So after a break we rebuild ourselves, finding a strength that we had no idea existed within us. It's never the failure itself, or the struggle to rebuild, though that repairs and restores, it's the power that we have at our core that we draw from, and it's a limitless resource.
The very restoration of our own being, that was never broken, just discovering new parts of the human experience as we patchwork ourselves back together again… It's these patchwork pieces that give way to these inner resources, revealing our strength to us in the breaking, that makes us so beautiful.
It's the patchworked together bit that's more compelling to me than the neat orderly, everything in place part. The patchwork shows history, has feeling, emanates mystery. Stimulates imaginings of paths walked, and hands touching before us.
The breakings are what make us human
Except we never break really, only open into deeper parts of who we are. Connecting deeper with what the Chinese call our 道德 Dàodé, our moral center and integrity. The image is of a person walking in the eye of their heart.
In the breakings we unfold into, and find the strength for the things that are truly meaningful and purposeful for us.
So yes, you can have a really neat and tidy life, but then you never break your own wall. And it's the people that do and fail and do and fail and get back up again that end up touching something deep in their cavern that never could have been excavated without the break to build.
Being brave always comes with risk, and will always include some stumbles as we navigate through the terrain of the wild expanse of the unknown, traversing through our hearts.
The key is in building enough self trust to know that you can not only do it, but handle it.
I don't know about you, but I'm here for it all. And I'm appreciative of every moment of this humanness thing. The failures and the flights.
In love
Joanna xxx
