Monday, February 6, 2012

Broken

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places." Ernest Hemingway

The world has broken me. It has broken me in many different places on different occassions. Sometimes I have seen it coming and have been able to catch the pieces, and sometimes it has been completely and totally unexpected, leaving me to search for the fragments scattered so widely and abruptly. I am not naive enough to believe that that world will never break me again, she is not that kind, and I am not that special.

Each time I have been broken I have been forever changed to a version of myself with more visible cracks and imperfections than before. Each fissure or break, while weakening me temporarily, in the end, only serves to strengthen me. It may take me time to put myself back together and to learn how to live "around" the damaged area, but having to adapt like this teaches me to be flexible, resilient, and perhaps, dare I say, a better version of what I was before.

Isn't that the point? Isn't that what software designers, for example, do? They take an operating system like Windows 1.o and figure out what its kinks are, where is it weak, what can be better? After a while, they make their tweaks and changes, some minor and some drastic, but the hope is that Version 2.o will be better.

There is no doubt that Boe's death has changed me forever and that I am forever changing. My prayer is that as I try to repair the me that was left broken and battered by the death of my child, I'll evolve into someone better, more improved, aware, alive and stronger than before.

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