Who you calling broken?

I read a quote today that said “you are not broken and do not need fixed” -Joshua Estrin
It got me thinking about the implications of viewing yourself as broken and how it would impact how you would go about living your life. I have always thought of myself as damaged, having a lot of emotional baggage and broken. And that notion implies that there is something wrong with you that needs fixed. That you aren’t whole, you are missing a part of you and you need to find/fix that missing piece. It implies that you are a victim of your circumstance and past and that inherently because of that you are no longer a complete, whole, healthy individual. Like you can’t live a happy healthy life because of something that happened in your past that you have to make better. But the truth is the past is unfixable. It is what it is. You can’t go back and change it. Instead you have to come to terms with what happened and be able to move on in a forward direction. You have to be able to accept it as a part of who you were and decide if you want it to affect who you are now. You can hold on to the past grievances and use them as justification for your brokenness and behavior or you can let them go.

And if you think about it isn’t everyone damaged/broken/maimed by things that have happened to them over the course of their life? There is no such thing as a perfect life. Hasn’t everyone had their hard times and scuffles? How is one persons’ ‘damage’ any less or more so then the next? So why do we feel damaged or broken or less than instead of just human? Human beings all go through strife and struggle. Human beings have lessons learned and become stronger from those lessons. Human beings give out their hearts and sometimes it doesn’t work out. Isn’t that all a part of being human? But can’t we thrive in spite of all that? Just because someone had a bad childhood or divorce or a loved one die or whatever hardship they suffered through, why does that somehow imply that there is no good to be found in their life after? Why does that have to mean that there is now something ‘wrong’ with them and that they are now somehow less than they were before? Doesn’t that just make you smarter, stronger, more adaptable to change, more appreciative of the good that is in your life? And if it doesn’t isn’t that the real cause for the brokenness? That you somehow couldn’t find a way to rise above the struggle and instead made it part of who you are. You can go through a trauma and it doesn’t have to break you, you can instead become stronger and better because of it. And the beauty of it all is YOU get to decide. You have the control over that part of the equation.

Everyone has a past and I think it is more what you chose to do with that past rather then what it contains, that makes all the difference. Bad things happen to people but it is how they handle those bad things that determines what kind of person they are. You cannot control what life throws at you but you can control how you react and handle what is thrown. It seems so simple to just change your mind about how you think of things but it makes all the difference in the world and it is a lot harder then it sounds. You have to start going against all that you thought was so. You have to fight against what feels like a natural instinct and change the way you see a given situation. So I decided today on my quest of getting through my emotional baggage I will no longer refer to myself as broken/damaged/not whole. I’m the same person I was before the divorce just smarter, stronger, and much much tougher. It does not define me and it will not make me a victim of that circumstance. I accept the situation for what it is and I will learn my lesson and move on. It has not damaged or broken me. I have to let something do that and I refuse.