Living Happiness

I was sitting recently, talking to a friend about the brokenness that we can experience in our lives. All of us experience this at one time or another and feel broken ourselves–flawed, messed up, perhaps even irredeemably so. We’re bruised, scarred and knotted, and we wonder: Can any good come of this?

Evelyn Lim at Attraction Mind Map wrote a lovely post recently that addressed this issue: she shared with her readers the Indian folktale “The Tale of the Water Bearer’s Pots,” sometimes known as “The Cracked Pot.” In this story, we are reminded that beauty can come of our flaws, that our imperfections do not have to mean that all is lost. The story of the broken vessel seems to say: Don’t lose heart. Even your flaws and chips and cracks can be used toward good.

I have taken comfort in this promise myself, glad that even in my not-so-wholeness there’s a chance that even my chips and flaws might somehow allow for love and beauty to bloom anyway.

But after talking with my friend, I began to wonder if there is more to the story, if perhaps we may sometimes stop too soon in our acceptance of it. The reason I say so is this question that began to gnaw at me: At what point is a flawed vessel no longer serving its purpose?

My friend and I puzzled over this together because both of us had encountered our own cracked pots recently, people so frequently broken and not so put back together that our interactions with them had become dangerous–cutting us, pricking us, shattering and wounding us. We had reached a point when we said of these interactions, “The fool here is me … for continuing to pick up this vessel.” And we had stepped back and said, “No more.”

The cracked pot no longer held water. We put it back on the shelf, out of reach, far from prying hands, far from any hands at all. But then … what purpose does it, can it, serve?

I began to wonder what bearing this had on me. When are my flaws admissible character traits, and when are they liabilities? Isn’t it in my best interest to eliminate as many of them as I can?

Growing up in a strict religious household, the response to these questions was most often Jesus’ admonishment to “Be perfect as I am perfect.” Wow. No pressure there. Be perfect? Nooo problem.

But as I got older, I came to understand that perfect as it was used in that scripture did not mean perfect the way I was taught to conceive of it: without fault or flaw. Instead perfect meant whole, complete. Ah. That made more sense. But how does one accomplish this wholeness? And what does it mean to be more complete?

Maybe it means taking all of the pieces of my life that have been chipped away and fragmented over the years and allowing them to be arranged again to reflect my truest nature which, at the end of the day, is really the divine nature at the heart of me. Maybe it means being a bit like Humpty Dumpty, but instead of remaining shattered, I am “put back together again.” This is a process of re-membering.

To “remember who we are” is, in a very real sense, to engage in the process of letting ourselves (and others) put the pieces of us back together again. When we remember who we are, we remember our essence, our purpose. We ask ourselves the question, “Who am I?” and in answering the question, we come to understand what the shape of this vessel, the shape of us, is meant to be.

It’s important to note that the process of re-membering is not a solitary one. We do not re-member ourselves in isolation but in the context of community. There is a point at which we have done all we can do to re-form ourselves, to file away our rough edges so that we do not shatter or wound those around us, and it is then we can allow ourselves to be shaped and formed by the loving hand of others, those who can see our inner beauty and help us achieve our purpose.

It’s great to be back.
Peace be with you.