Tuesday, August 01, 2017

Falling Apart in Your Hands

What do you do when something start falling apart in your hands?

We all know the drill at some point in our lives - the job, the relationship, the dream - that starts to come apart.  The  fractures were perhaps there long than we had realized and only began to be revealed in the moments of stress - usually, of course, when things fail to be going quite as planned.  Almost before you know it, the whole thing starts to crumble away, like a sand castle hit by one too many waves, slowly collapsing into an unrecognizable shapeless mass.

Our initial reaction, usually, is to try to cobble the thing back together.  We rapidly move, trying to gather together the pieces a push them back together as if a relationship or a dream or a job was a ball of clay, needing only pressure to push it back together.  That seldom works in these cases of course - it is far more complicated and far too many strands have been broken to pull the thing back into alignment. And so we find ourselves with a half made, half destroyed thing in our hands, a project that looks as if we were trying to put it together, not prevent it from coming apart.

What is the secret in moments like this?  Is it to try to push things together even harder, hoping that force and mystical gravitational forces will make the the whole?  Is it to simply let the thing continue to dissolve in our hands?  Is it to try to repair the thing with the resources we have available?  Or is is it to cut away the debris, look at the reminder, and determine what to do from there?

Sadly, it feels I have had far more things fall apart than I ever held together.  And I can hardly think of a time that the thing could have been rebuilt.  

Too often we believe things to be strong when in fact they are bound together only by moon ash and gossamer threads.

4 comments:

  1. I think that most times, there were warning signs but generally speaking, people tend to avoid those, thinking they aren't really important or they'll work themselves out. I used to be that way and I had many things fall apart on me. But these days, maybe I've become hyper-aware, when I see a crack forming on something that means a hell of a lot to me, I try to repair and nurture it at the get go before the crack gets worse.

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  2. There is no secret TB.

    You bury the bodies. You mourn and grieve until you're finished and then you move on and try not to look back. At least, so it goes for me. I hope all works out for you.

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  3. Rain - You are right. Probably some of the time (most of the time for me) I am willing overlooking the cracks until they are canyon-like in good avoidance fashion. Good on you for paying attention.

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  4. Glen, that is the practical aspect that I have the most problem with. I cannot ever seem to let go and bury the dead but insist on lugging them around with me as if somehow you can change the past and make it better. It is probably an unwilling spirit not wishing to face the truth as it is.

    Thanks for the kind thoughts. At this point resolution would be grand.

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