On Being Broken
I have been broken a few times in my life - that moment when you or your life seems f&%#ed. For me it happened over and over with each of my arrests as a teenager when I found myself, once again, riding in the back seat of a cop car with handcuffs on.
Or when I went through a divorce.
Or when I lost a young mother on the operating room table.
Or when I found myself in Hazelden rehab center for prescription narcotic addiction, being given a tour of my new home for the next 3 months by an alcoholic medical student from Harvard.
You get the picture, and unless you are an incredibly lucky human, it will or has happened to you. It doesn't matter what the thing is that causes you to feel broken, it is simply the fact that you feel that way, and sometimes no amount of willpower, gratitude journals, or self-talk can change it, at all!
When I have felt broken, it always is a combination of fear (of the future), shame (the toxic emotion that says you're not worthy and don't belong), and self-loathing (fueled by the potent power of shame).
So the next time you feel broken, no matter the cause (don't judge!!), try to remember these things:
- A quote from Winston Churchill - "when you are going through hell, keep going." For me this means committing to put one foot in front of the other, sometimes for the next 5 minutes, for the next hour, day or week, no matter how you feel!
- Watch the above video about a 100-dollar bill still ,worth $100 even when it is crumpled up and stomped on. I picked up this story from Sahil Bloom, and I reproduce part of what he wrote here:
"There will be moments where life stomps on you, where the storm hits and threatens to tear you apart.
But in these moments, you have an important choice:
You get to choose to see your full worth.
You get to choose to treat yourself with compassion, grace, and respect.
You get to choose to remove yourself from the environments or relationships where that worth is not appreciated.
You get to choose to always appreciate your full value.
You get to choose to see yourself as the $100 bill, unbroken by the storms of life." - Remember this picture and the Japanese word for the beauty of impermanence and broken things: wabi-sabi, which is expressed so beautifully by the Japanese tradition of Kintsugi, where broken bowls or pots are mended with golden lacquer to accentuate the beauty of the restoration. Kintsugi repairs the object while highlighting its history to show how imperfections add to an object's (human's) beauty and value.
I'm sharing these notions because, no matter the circumstance or the setback, I believe in you and your human spirit!
