Some Broken Things Don't Need Fixing

When humans discover the floor is dirty, most of us will endeavor to clean it in order to see the sparkling surface again. Some of us won't. Some of us will just continue walking on it until the surface is scarred by the trash we've ground into it over the days/weeks/months of neglect. Life is like that. If we don't take care of ourselves at some point, we become permanently scarred by the things/people/events we allowed or condoned in our world. Still, not everything that is broken needs to be mended.

Now, I'm not saying acrylic paint is a bad idea when your canvas just doesn't look the way you wanted it to look, but sometimes it's cathartic to spray paint an ugly canvas stark white or jet black and just start over from scratch. You know what's underneath, and that dried paint can actually give the new surface character and life, but eventually you'll even forget what was there as you stare at your beautiful new work with pride.

The human condition is a difficult one to manage at best. Even if we're raised "right", have a lifetime of morals and ethics thrust into our psyche, examples set before us of how to live if you want X outcome (fill in for x), we still hiccup and jump track and there we are sitting on the side of the road with our head in our hands wondering where we went wrong. We don't really. We know. We just wish we could use an excuse of some kind.

The past is a lesson.

Remember that if you take nothing else away from this. The past is just a lesson and some of us have a PhD in chaos. If you just recognize history as a cruel teacher with a wooden dowel rod who will smack you across your back if you repeat the same mistakes, then you won't. Or you're a masochist and you will, your choice.

Some things are prettier broken. Some things are more useful broken. You can't make an omelet without breaking the egg first. Well, you can but that would be hard to eat.

All these years I've loathed parts of my past that taught me the most powerful lessons. They were the algebra and trigonometry courses that I wished I didn't have to take, and thought I'd never have to use in the future. Those classes gave me the courage to face similar obstacles in a life I hadn't planned to live. I'm not saying I'd do it again the same way if I had the chance to do otherwise, but I think I needed to know some of those things. I'm rambling. I do have a point.

This week has been a human tea bag steeping in a vat of boiling blood of the past. It has stifled the present and the future with its overwhelming ferocity, and drowned the positive blessings of my current life with a never ending tidal wave of memories just slamming into the shore of my consciousness. Where I was, what I did, who I saw, who I knew, things I wish I could find a mental eraser to just strictly UNDO; all of the random heroes and villains of my past have reared their ugly heads in my fragile human mind this week and I'm trying to figure out why. Do I need closure? Is there something that needs to be said that hasn't? I don't think so, actually. I don't make a habit of explaining myself to people who don't matter (or people who do). It just is what it is, but shifting the balance from cast iron bitch to empathetic Libra has thrown me slightly off kilter, as it would anyone who has lived my life, I feel assured.

I love fixing broken things to back to where they're functional again. This can be witnessed in almost every room of my home where there are wood frames that fell victim to old hooks in even older sheetrock and collapsed to the floor, only to be rescued, sanded, repainted, new glass placed, and refreshed to serve a purpose again. There's pottery that was shattered in a move that I restored with obvious cracks, but it's waterproof and will happily display a bouquet of hand snagged flowers from a child. It's not so different with people who come into my life broken and feeling useless.

No, it's not my job to heal the world and most of the time it's none of my damned business, but I make it my business to help if I see an obvious need. If it's clear that someone has a purpose and can be helped to achieve a goal, I might step in and try to put them on a better path, and sometimes my spirit tells me that this is a lost cause. If the original material isn't strong enough to hold together even with the best of glue, and I leave it up to God's capable hands. That has been the case with many people over the last 20 years, the last 10 in particular; young people who have come into my life because they needed a fresh perspective, only to discover they cleaved to the old one like it was mother's milk.

The past is not where you live. The past is a lesson.

When that frame fell off the wall, it didn't just hurt the frame, it broke the glass, scratched the artwork under the glass, and made a divot in the floor beneath. Damage was done. In order to repair the frame, I had to spend time on it, address the situation with scrutiny and appreciation, and determine if it was worth my efforts. More times than not, the frame was fixed. More times than not, I left the scratch on the floor to remind me of what happened there once. More times than not, a new piece of artwork replaced the old one. Same frame, new placement in the house, but memories left behind by what was simply and unpretentiously, an accident.

Don't read more into it than what's there. I can't heal the dead. I can't work miracles. Human beings are flawed by their very nature and stubbornly defend their ideas and beliefs, even when they're tragically mistaken. Those are the hardest to glue together. The ones who consistently fall from the hook, no matter how well placed and leveled, no matter how secure, those are the ones who sometimes just have to be set on a shelf somewhere and displayed in a different sort of way. See? Still useful, but just not quite as expected.

I still consider the people from my life who have been destructive and painful for me. I just consider them in a different way. If I tried to glue them together and they were made of a material that did not adhere to my type of adhesive, then I had to let that go eventually and stop working on it. I do know when I'm not going to be able to fix something. I do know when to stop. I have never been utterly defeated by life, however, because I am the fixer. I'm not the fixee. God in all His infinite glue puts me back together when I slam myself into the floor or fall during a move. God will fix other people too, but when He isn't asked, that's where I step in and do my best to help do for them what He does for me.

Make sense?

Stay in the present. If you made mistakes, don't make them again. God forgives, people aren't so generous. Learn from the lessons of your past and remember you're not always right; nobody is. You did hurt other people with your behavior; everyone does. You did do the wrong thing more times than not; a lot of people do. You were not perfect; nobody is. Learn from it and do better and quit taking everything so damned personally. It's not always about you, dummy.