When you were growing up, life seemed so much simpler. Your parents knew the answers to your questions, your teachers gave you information to fill your head, your friends and family were the only people in the world... your world.
Your reality was what your experience was comprised of. Yes, logical and rational, I know, but remembering what the world looked like to you through the eyes of your 8 year old self, for example, fills you with a sense of purity and simplicity.
In my memory, I can still see virtually every crack in the sidewalk from my 2.5 block walk from my house on Lynn Avenue to Louise Crawford Elementary school. Each crack punctuated the steps I chose (step on a crack, break your mama's back) and each crack filled me with wonder.
Those cracks were filled with stories, with memories of their own, and with life.
Much like the cracks of imperfection in our own lives, they tell a tale of weathering the elements, of taking hard hits at times, and of driving forces from the outside affecting us--like tree roots interrupting an otherwise perfect slab of blank sidewalk concrete.
However, in our lives, we tend to hide from the cracks that have fractured us. We bury the pain that they brought to us. We try to pretend like everything is alright, that we don't carry the imperfection of experience. That we are without fracture, without crack, without any wear of the day-to-day compounded. We, in essence, hide from the realities of our own lives out of fear, out of shame, and out of so many fabricated reasons that we justify and lie to ourselves about just to "protect" us from feeling what was once a circumstance that affected us and punctuated part of our slab of life.
Well, we should take a lesson from the sidewalk of our youth, as it bore no judgement on what happened to create the fissures and cracks. It simply bore the experience that it was given and freely advertised the web-like patterns throughout virtually every square of sidewalk down the street.
Let yourself go, from these buried memories and experiences that happened in your life. Begin to free your cracks and imperfections. Be vulnerable. Be free. Be complete and whole. You are beautiful and complete, cracks and all, for you are you, and your challenges and experiences are all a part of your true reality.
Your reality was what your experience was comprised of. Yes, logical and rational, I know, but remembering what the world looked like to you through the eyes of your 8 year old self, for example, fills you with a sense of purity and simplicity.
In my memory, I can still see virtually every crack in the sidewalk from my 2.5 block walk from my house on Lynn Avenue to Louise Crawford Elementary school. Each crack punctuated the steps I chose (step on a crack, break your mama's back) and each crack filled me with wonder.
Those cracks were filled with stories, with memories of their own, and with life.
Much like the cracks of imperfection in our own lives, they tell a tale of weathering the elements, of taking hard hits at times, and of driving forces from the outside affecting us--like tree roots interrupting an otherwise perfect slab of blank sidewalk concrete.
However, in our lives, we tend to hide from the cracks that have fractured us. We bury the pain that they brought to us. We try to pretend like everything is alright, that we don't carry the imperfection of experience. That we are without fracture, without crack, without any wear of the day-to-day compounded. We, in essence, hide from the realities of our own lives out of fear, out of shame, and out of so many fabricated reasons that we justify and lie to ourselves about just to "protect" us from feeling what was once a circumstance that affected us and punctuated part of our slab of life.
Well, we should take a lesson from the sidewalk of our youth, as it bore no judgement on what happened to create the fissures and cracks. It simply bore the experience that it was given and freely advertised the web-like patterns throughout virtually every square of sidewalk down the street.
Let yourself go, from these buried memories and experiences that happened in your life. Begin to free your cracks and imperfections. Be vulnerable. Be free. Be complete and whole. You are beautiful and complete, cracks and all, for you are you, and your challenges and experiences are all a part of your true reality.
