The Refugees – Tamara De Lempicka. Wikioo.

“You’ve seen the refugees going nowhere, you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world.”

(Extract from  Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh, from Without End: New and Selected Poems (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)

Zagajewski’s meaningful poem urges us to praise the mutilations, desecrations and brokenness of our world. He is asking a lot of us, and he knows that. The news currently is often grim and some people will not watch TV or read newspapers, as they try to escape from the true horror stories of life. What are the ways in which our world broken? So many distressing events are happening at once, in relation to climate change, war, pandemics, poverty, hunger, racial oppression, that we may wonder if we have any option but to feel downhearted in response.

Weeping Woman – Pablo Picasso. Wikioo.

“We are all broken. I mean, aren’t we now? I am. The whole wide world is.” Jandy Nelson

Our world is, indeed, broken in many ways. There has been a multitude of tragedies, accidents, homelessness, desperate refugees, war, poverty, disease and loss. Even in relatively peaceful and happy times, there will still be brokenness, for nobody is perfect. We all have broken bits, we all make mistakes…. perhaps in some ways we can learn to celebrate our brokenness? Over time, only some things can be mended. Tyrants can be defeated. Relationships can be healed. Reparation can be achieved. However, there will still be scars and painful memories, which we all have to learn to live with.

Savage Hump-Shaker – Maria Primachenko. Wikioo.

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

Neil Gaiman, Coraline

The phoenix can rise from the ashes, new can be made from the old and the discarded, from found objects, from the remnants of past lives.

tifotter. cool new sculpture.Joe Pogan Sculptures.(found metal and silverware) Flickr.

“Found objects, chance creations, ready-mades (mass-produced items promoted into art objects, such as Duchamp’s “Fountain”-urinal as sculpture) abolish the separation between art and life. The commonplace is miraculous if rightly seen.”

Charles Simic

Pierre Bonnard. The White Room.

“Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.”

(Extract from  Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh, from Without End: New and Selected Poems (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)

The beautiful poem still urges us to praise this ‘mutilated world,’ despite all the brokenness and pain. It offers us hope, in that there are still so many good things that we have, such as the bounties of nature, sunny days, collecting acorns in Autumn and wonderful, comforting memories.

Autumn Leaves At Play – Charles Ephraim Burchfield. Wikioo.

“ ‘Only today,’ he said, ‘today, in October sun, it’s all gold—sky and tree and water. Everything just before it changes looks to be made of gold.’ ”

Eudora Welty, The Wide Net and Other Stories

Despite the distress that we see all around, there is still beauty and joy in the world. Noticing it all around us, we learn to feel gratitude for nature’s bounties.

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”

Theodore Roethke

Living for the present and feeling appreciation for what we have now is not always easy. However, it is definitely a good way of managing our life: the past is gone, the future is unknown, we only have today and this moment.

“Exquisite beauty is often hidden in life’s fragile, fleeting moments.”

John Mark Green

Although things are tough at this time, perhaps we can pause and try to appreciate what we do have in our lives that is good.

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

Buddha

“Praise the mutilated world and the gray feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.”

By Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh, from Without End: New and Selected Poems (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)

Love

Love Among the Ruins – Edward Coley Burne-Jones. Wikioo.

“Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.”

L.R. Knost

Spreading light through love is a very powerful way of addressing the problem of human brokenness. Loving and being loved changes people, making them feel more whole and less fragmented.

“Love cures people – both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.”

Karl A. Menninger

Psychotherapy.

“Psychotherapy is a cure through love.”

Sigmund Freud.

Psychotherapy is also about repairing, or transforming human brokenness. The therapist’s empathic and accepting stance can enable the patient to feel more whole, less distressed and self-critical.

“You know, people come to therapy really for a blessing. Not so much to fix what’s broken, but to get what’s broken blessed.”

James Hillman

How can we do more than survive childhood damage? Can we ever recover? Many times, people search for someone, or something, to compensate for their past losses. This will inevitably mean disappointment, for no-one can ever replace the parents, or experiences, we did not have or rectify a broken childhood.

Thus, life is often disheartening. It might feel that people fall short of  our expectations, as we seek the ‘perfect’ spouse, parent, child, sibling, guru, therapist, friend. Jung said-

‘Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.’

Despite our brokenness, somewhere inside there often is a light, a seed of hope for the future. Even an old broken chair can be beautiful enough to inspire a painting.

Broken Chair – (Gerald Albert Cains)

Poppies symbolise growth out of damage and loss, still flowering on the former battlefields of the first world war, a living memorial and a reminder of past trauma. Their continued growth and brightness may be seen as symbolising both the losses of the past and hope for a future that will be more peaceful and constructive.

In Flanders Field-Where Soldiers Sleep and Poppies Grow, Poppies – (Robert William Vonnoh. Wikioo.

Phoenix-like, energy and strength may emerge from the ashes of adversity, revealing transformation and a kind of rebirth.

Spirit-form transformation – Giacomo Balla. Wikioo.

“Beautiful are those whose brokenness gives birth to transformation and wisdom.”

John Mark Green

Sanford (below) describes how many adults traumatised in childhood have amazing resilience. It is frequently said that lifelong emotional damage is inevitable after such experiences, yet there are countless examples of healthy, functioning adults who have experienced childhood abuse.

Healing may be attained, for example, through nurturing relationships, spirituality, self-examination, religion or art. In psychotherapy, people learn to work through their past traumas, frequently emerging feeling stronger and more insightful. Therapy may help explore faulty beliefs and ideas. An empathic, non-judgmental therapist can enable troubling, repetitive thoughts and emotions to emerge that may have been denied or repressed. Feelings such as guilt, shame or uncontrolled anger might be limiting personally and affect relationships. There may be an exploration of past experience, discovering its influence on adult feelings, relationships and behaviour. One may thus gain insight into the roots of psychological pain and how to manage and resolve it. Whilst therapy cannot make people forget trauma, it can help them to manage the effects better. They become less burdened by disturbing memories and more confident that they have the inner resources to cope. Often, people come to realise that being human involves having shortcomings; an awareness and acceptance of one’s own ‘shadow side’ makes this feel less threatening and more under control. Frequently, our human fallibility can be a foundation for empathy and compassion; being flawed is different from being weak. Our idiosyncrasies make us unique and individual; loving another person involves embracing their, and our own, limitations and ‘brokenness.’ Perhaps, paradoxically, our irregularities, our incompleteness, are what makes us real, whole people. Leonard Cohen said : ‘There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’ The impossible quest for perfection creates unbearable tension; it is often about feeling inadequate, perhaps partly through high parental expectations. Broken and healed people, at all stages of personal renewal, can be beautiful. Imagine how dull life would be if we all resembled a prototype of human robotic perfection. The Japanese have a process called kintsukuroi, in which they mend broken pots with gold.

Wine pot with gold lacquer repair. Korea. 1100-50, stoneware, curved and incised under celadon glaze, repaired in Japan. Wikimedia Commons.

“We too can repair our cracks with gold And glow again. Crazed by life, More beautiful than ever before.”

Scott Hastie

The repaired piece is changed by the breaking and the recovery; different, but still beautiful. Maybe it will be more valuable, as there is evidence of a past, of its history. Something precious has been added. There is also a powerful visual indicator of the pot’s innate resilience.

“The world is more magical, less predictable, more autonomous, less controllable, more varied, less simple, more infinite, less knowable, more wonderfully troubling than we could have imagined being able to tolerate when we were young.”

James Hollis

Thus it is with the wounded and broken person; repair and improvement are always possible. Out of bad, sometimes there emerges something good, enhancing, reinforcing. This may take the form of new learning, resilience and courage. People are often inherently stronger than we could possibly imagine. We are born with truly amazing resources and we need to learn to trust and fortify these in ourselves and others, as we learn to cope with our broken selves in a broken world.

Healing (Letting Go) – Clare Galloway. Wikioo.

“The struggles will become your story, And that’s the beauty of Kintsugi. Your cracks can become the most beautiful part of you.”

Candice Kumai.