There is a crack in everything – that’s where the light gets in – Leonard Cohan
One of my favorite quotes. Its so true. If we were all perfect, we’d be so incredibly boring. I’d like to add my own spin to it: There is a crack in everything – that’s where the words come in. I have always wanted to be a writer but I didn’t write. Not that I couldn’t, nothing was stopping me, I just didn’t.
Realization: I have lived a life not doing what I always wanted to do. ouch…
I realize now that I was trying to write from the whole, trying to deliver a story in complete form, perfect; delivered from a finished, proper, perfect, me. If I still didn’t have things figured out, then I didn’t have anything to say. That is where my error was. I was missing the gold mine that is the crack, the messy, confused, un-evolved, bumbling me that was just trying to get her footing, to understand what the hell is going on in this crazy incarnation, to just make her way in the world. I don’t know if it’s a family trait, or just some belief I picked up somewhere – I always thought that everyone else had it all figured out. And that somehow, despite my best efforts, even though I was really close to ‘it’, something would happen that would keep me from ‘making it’. Whatever that means.
The Japanese have a wonderful art form called Wabi Sabi. Defined: represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”. (thanks google)
And their whole premise of Wabi Sabi is the flaws or repaired places of things (and people) are where the beauty lie. They fill up the cracks in pottery with gold. Simply by repairing the crack enhances the beauty of the piece beyond its unbroken self. Well, there is a lesson in embracing my cracks. Maybe by filling up my cracks with my words, I’ll enhance my beauty (my fullness) more than I ever could with only living from the whole? (that was never truly whole because it didn’t embrace the cracks!)
wordstopaige 