"Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral
part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness – mine, yours,
ours – need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for
new life." Palmer Parker
As the days tick closer to my 50th birthday, I find myself seeking wise words. The gift of age is understanding that our expanding knowledge moves like a lava flow. At times it bursts forth in dramatic fashion but mostly it flows slowly and swallows us whole.
Feeling less than whole at this stage of life is supposedly normal. Wanting to be normal is supposedly...normal.
I find solace in the words of other brave souls who admit to feeling less than prepared for life's second half. Seeing those women who wave the flags of re-invention do not spur me to reinvent anything. I rather like who I've become and that's due to my acceptance of not becoming anything! Who I am is unchangeable. How I think and react is totally fluid. Wisdom about myself has come with my age; it has come as I gathered up the fragments of my life.
Broken Mirror
I looked in the mirror as a young girl
And saw my older self.
Calmly observing my face,
I was disappointed.
Is this all, I asked.
Shouldn't I be more?
Why did I look like
myself?
Disappointment broke that reflection.
Fragments of my mirror scattered.
Pieces of me were given away.
I was happy to be broken.
But now I look again and accept
My vessel.
Now I place the pieces together
And find myself whole, unchanged, again.
This wholesome feeling...some of the time,
Unbroken, much of the time,
Accepting, all of the time...
And given...more time....
I love your poem
ReplyDeleteIt recalls to me "On Joy and Sorrow" by Kahlil Gibran,
C.S. Lewis also speaks about this inversely proportional relationship between our capacity for joy and our experience with pain. We are all broken. Our reconstruction hopefully has a stronger bond between the old pieces than the material itself. As I grow older and my vision fades, instead of getting focused on the perfectionist details I am much more appreciative of the overall silhouette, balance and form that elicits a deep emotional response in me. The lines and scars of personal reconstruction tell the story. Meeting a fellow traveler on the journey, be it on a mountain top or in a valley of life, the tender and vulnerable moments of sharing our scars and the stories over reconstruction are certainly the most beautiful in life. I do realize that there are times that a poorly positioned piece during one of my prior attempt needs to be rebroken and lovingly placed to make me more whole. it is a sacred privilege to have a fellow traveler and kindred spirit assist with its adjustment. while this adjustment, however minut, can cause pain yet I take solace in the fact that my capacity for joy has increased that much more.