Sometimes, things break. Like the plate – just one in the whole cabinet – which broke during that earthquake that so surprised me last year. It happens.
And, having grown up in thrifty, practical, puritanical New England, I learned that when things break, you fix them. You get out the Superglue or that weird epoxy two part stuff and you find a way and you put it back together, carefully matching up the hairline cracks. And there you have it. Good as new.
Except it isn’t.
It is never the same and that’s okay – things change. I can deal with that part, easily. Often, it’s stronger than ever, of course. It’s just that sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes, it is just off balance, it doesn’t sit flat. Or in the case of a pitcher, say, it doesn’t hold water. It leaks. So you patch it some more, and things get worse, not better.
Sometimes, you just need to throw it out and find a new one. Or shatter it and add it to a mosaic, bringing in pieces of other things that were once beautiful. You create a whole new work of art.
And so it is, I sense, with relationships.
As human beings, our relationships with each other can still feel as though they are critical to our very survival, as they were long ago. And in a sense, they are. Community is where love thrives, in the best case scenario. Sometimes, though, a relationship can hold us back. Sometimes it can subtract rather than add to both parties’ lives. Sometimes it can feel a whole lot like quicksand.
And the leaving part can feel really hard. Like climbing a mountain in a pair of tennis shoes. Like we just can’t do it. Like we’ll never be the same again. And we won’t.
Sometimes, in letting go, we can be better. We can find freedom and give it to the one we once loved. It can be a gift, bigger than we can possibly imagine, lying there in the quicksand.
Sometimes, things break and the only thing you can do is let them shatter.
The foregoing is syndicated from Christa Gallopoulos’ Carry It Forward… and is posted here with permission.
Christa Gallopoulos
Life guidance through creativity and intuitive practice.
Founder & visionary – http://womenheal.org/