It broke!
The darn mirror that I use every day to see the back of my head while I’m styling my hair dropped on my bathroom floor then shattered. It shattered just enough that I could still see through some of the broken pieces. Enough that I could still style my short hair — and those who know me, know I’m a perfectionist when it comes to my hair. No strand is ever left untouched!
At that moment, I began to think about the ways I have picked up most of the broken pieces of my life, of my heart and my soul as I started to pick up the broken pieces from the floor.
It was a very real analogy to me — as inanimate as this broken mirror was. The sight of the broken, yet still functioning two-sided mirror made my mind burst into life again with an enlightening comparison to me, an animate object. A human being who has been fractured many times.
The one side of the two-sided mirror that I always looked into has always been so clear — or, so I thought — shattered! In that “ah-ha moment,” I equated my life’s struggles with the cracks and broken pieces.
Most of the broken pieces had fallen to the ground and been picked up, therefore they are no longer present, similar to most of the pain and struggles in my life.
I was now forced to use the extremely magnified 6x side that I never really given much attention to as it was hard to see clearly as the reflection too large, and a struggle to focus in on. Heck, most times I hated what I saw in that mirror so I did what I felt comfortable with, and looked through the non-magnified side.
Now with the magnified side, I was forced to look harder and deeper. I saw the flaws that needed to be fixed in my life. The pain I needed to stand up to. The negativity I needed to bury. The struggle I needed to overcome. All of these took great focus and forced me to cross over to the other side — the side I was used to ignoring every day.
As I brought the magnified side closer to my eyes, I began
to see clearly — almost everything. But wait, I just noticed something, the
clear magnified side sustained a slight fracture in the fall. But it is just
that, slight.
Fractured but not broken.
Whole, but not perfect.
Natalie Therese Wilson, April 1, 2017