Scars
Forty years ago this month I fell off my bicycle. It was a warm August morning and I was frantically pedaling up the street when something went wrong. I wound up sliding on the pavement, badly scraping my knee.
It took 2-3 weeks to heal and my knee was very sore. And forty years later I still have faint scar on my knee.
Through the course of our lives we acquire many scars. There's of course the scars from bicycle accidents, sport injuries and schoolyard fights. And later in life some of us have surgery or other procedures which leave their mark.
And then there's the other kinds of scars. Wounded feelings from how our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers treated us as we grew up. Hurt feelings between friends and lovers, the emotional scars from our relationships.
And of course there's the mental scars, minds frozen in patterns of resistance and limitation because of the emotional pain. These are more subtle scars that carry lifelong influence upon
us.
Is there a way to avoid these scars? Only if we completely cloister ourselves from the world and never venture out and take any risks. Scars are sign that we have lived lives full of challenge as well as pain. We have let ourselves love, risk, lose, win, acquire experiences, let go of things we have loved, succeed, suffer loss. The idea is not to get to the finish line in perfect,unblemished condition. To live life to the fullest is to come to its end battered, bruised, and if we allow ourselves, to be fulfilled. That's how we express ourselves as human beings having a spiritual experience.
It took 2-3 weeks to heal and my knee was very sore. And forty years later I still have faint scar on my knee.
Through the course of our lives we acquire many scars. There's of course the scars from bicycle accidents, sport injuries and schoolyard fights. And later in life some of us have surgery or other procedures which leave their mark.
And then there's the other kinds of scars. Wounded feelings from how our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers treated us as we grew up. Hurt feelings between friends and lovers, the emotional scars from our relationships.
And of course there's the mental scars, minds frozen in patterns of resistance and limitation because of the emotional pain. These are more subtle scars that carry lifelong influence upon
us.
Is there a way to avoid these scars? Only if we completely cloister ourselves from the world and never venture out and take any risks. Scars are sign that we have lived lives full of challenge as well as pain. We have let ourselves love, risk, lose, win, acquire experiences, let go of things we have loved, succeed, suffer loss. The idea is not to get to the finish line in perfect,unblemished condition. To live life to the fullest is to come to its end battered, bruised, and if we allow ourselves, to be fulfilled. That's how we express ourselves as human beings having a spiritual experience.
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