The story goes a little something like this (excerpt from Camiimac), "A great military leader (with a supposedly hot temper) was given a beautiful bowl for an important tea ceremony. Someone dropped the bowl, which broke into five pieces. One of the guests spoke up with an improvised poem cleverly linking the name of the giver of the bowl, the style of the bowl, and the five broken pieces, making them all laugh and avoiding the wrath of the hot-headed leader. This specific bowl has since become quite famous. This essay goes on to say that instead of the break "…diminishing [the bowl's] appeal, a new sense of its vitality and resilience raised appreciation to even greater heights." The bowl has become more beautiful for having been broken. The true life of the bowl "…began the moment it was dropped…"
I know my jaw dropped as she shared this tale with me. This tale contains within it the story of each one of us my friends. All of the moments in our lives when we are dropped, chipped beyond recognition, and bruised with the intensity of life- these are the moments in which we truly come alive. Our beauty is born of late night broken hearts and early morning sunrises. Our beauty is charged with grace and tinged with anger. Our beauty is not realized in moments of control, our beauty is cultivated in moments of surrender. We become even more beautiful for the moments of our lives that have cracked us, that have broken us, that have asked us to rise time and time again. We have seen the valleys, we have known the bitter elements, we have ridden the waves of grief- and then the sunrises, the blanket of winter warms to spring hues and our hearts reawaken. There are moments we feel that we cant get out of bed, but then somehow we remember our resilience. We remember that love is the glue of life. We ebb and flow. We dive and crash. We are life in constant motion.
How would your life change if you began looking at your life this way? Instead of seeing the chip and the fracture, can you see the beauty of your life? I am still sitting with the enormity of this work, and as I watch my friend prepare her business I can't wait to see how she is going to help people engage in their healing work. May you hold a space for possibilities as you begin to entertain your life in this fashion. Perhaps you are just beginning to come alive? After all isn't the crack where the light gets in?
May You Sweetly Seek:)
In Gratitude,
Sarah