Ripples: Broken Water

"What is broken in your life?" she asked from the pulpit. 

 

A presumptuous question, assuming that anything is broken in my life, that anything in life can be broken.

 

"A broken heart, a broken spirit, a broken marriage, a broken relationship," suggestions for those who are blocked for brokenness. 

 

Is it possible, I wonder, for anything in life to be broken? Rather than fix what is broken, perhaps we need to practice pulling focus, constantly adjusting our view so we may see our ever-changing life with clarity. 

 

We work to fix ourselves into fitting into something to please others:  fixing our hair, our skin, our profession, our voice, our personality, our humor, our social status, our income, our education.  We operate in the negative of what is wrong, blinding ourselves to what is beautiful and perfect in its imperfection, its uniqueness. 

 

"God dwells within you as you yourself, exactly the way you are.  God isn't interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves.  We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, dramatic, change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality.  . . . Swamiji used to stay that every day renunciants find something new to renounce, but it is usually depression, not peace, that they attain.  Constantly he was teaching that austerity and renunciation ... are not what you need.  To know God, you need only to renounce one thing -- your sense of division from God.  Otherwise, just stay as you were made . . . "  (Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love)

 

Fine.  Nothing is broken.  Nothing needs to be fixed. 

 

Yet, I am not fixed; I am evolving, changing, growing.    Another beautiful paradox we find ourselves in with our dichotomous thinking:  how can perfection and change coexist?

 

"I don't want you to change for me."

 

Is it possible to not change we someone enters our lives and hearts?   With each thought, each action, we create and transform our world, including others.  Isn't that wonderful?   

 

I seek transformation and gravitate towards those who will precipitate that.  Recently, I have learned to see myself as no longer the bookworm child, but as an active, healthy, athletic adult.  Others push me to transcend my limits of my self-misperception.   With the encouragement and insight of friends and lovers and acquaintances, I find the courage to periodically molt the skin my ego tries to contain me in.

 

Tonight I remembered I had not read the feedback letters from my peers in response to my presentation yesterday.  I sat down to the read the letters and felt blessed I had waiting until the night before going back to my students.  "Your students must love you."  "Fun."  "Oh wise one."  "Time flew . . . great transitions ... calming voice . . . accessible . . . " Through their eyes I may see the teacher me with new confidence and enthusiasm.  Yes, I do enjoy my job, I do impart clarity and expect much from my students, I do laugh at myself and with them.

 

So, why, I wonder, do we limit ourselves by limiting others, but not asking or sharing our fantasies, hopes, passions, and goals?  

 

Perhaps seeing someone else embrace change would force facing one's own fear of change. 

 

Perhaps we fear being seen as broken and are even more afraid of being fixed.  If we are exactly as we should be and we are not content, then we can no longer coast along a victim, but must act and all actions provoke change, just like the lifting of your arm lifts mine, moving my body into a turn, leading me back to you.