When You’re Right, You’re Right

It’s common to hear from others when things aren’t going your way that “it’s always darkest before the dawn!” or “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”. Admittedly these adages are well-meaning and are a convenient, neatly packaged remark for someone who’s made uncomfortable by a person clearly struggling. Worse yet are when these truisms are phoned-in and delivered without sincerity, not allowing for them to resonate as they could. People tend to drop these pint size truth-bombs like word vomit, offering up a comforting remark as good social form, their unease an often involuntary response to the misery you’re experiencing, born of the ineptitude one feels when observing someone they care for in pain.

Given how aphorisms can quickly allow one to see clearly something they weren’t able to see before, it seems a shame that we have opted for expressing these sentiments so wantonly, thereby taking away some of their innate power, relegating them to sayings as common as “Hi, how are you?” They’re like good design, conveying its message clearly and in a way that people from 4-104 can understand. But, just like good design, we can easily take this power for granted, drawing on these weighty words only when we don’t have anything better to say. Rather, I propose that we use these phrases as a jumping off point allowing for every day profundity. Why not take the opportunity to explore the idea or concept of an aphorism further and see where it goes?

I know a lot about broken things. I’m deeply familiar with broken windows patched with plastic and held together with duct tape. I’ve seen broke-down cars cluttering a yard, losing argument after argument with a broken man who refused to let those who drove by week after week, to take the eyesores off his hands. I’ve patched countless holes in walls, born of anger and pain, with mud and tape, a quick sand and some paint. I’ve watched beloved keepsakes from childhood, memory books and pictures drawn, projects made and medals won, an entire home and people I love break and rot and melt away.

But broken things have much to reveal. They can show us that we may not be placing our care and attention in the right places, allowing for the unnecessary deterioration of a thing, providing the type and lack of attention that allows for things to fall completely apart. Be this because we don’t feel responsible to whatever or whoever may be coming undone or whether this is so because we are too overwhelmed ourselves to even notice these things, it seems prudent to take heed of when and why things break.

Just as reverse engineering and analyzing accidents can allow us to better understand how to prevent them, we can look to how and why things break to best avoid suffering when possible. Acknowledging that broken things tell us something about ourselves and then giving them the appropriate attention and value then seems the logical thing to do. Driving a car without ever changing the oil or checking the tires would create the conditions for the vehicle to deteriorate more quickly than it should, telling us that we should opt for the incremental maintenance of a thing versus the headache of the overhaul approach. If we were to acknowledge where we lack and recognize our fault in not properly maintaining a thing we have value for, we would hopefully internalize the lesson and not do it again in the future.

But what do you do in the aftermath? Most people would simply get a new car and work to not make the same mistake again, but what if there was zero chance of you getting another car, and all you had to work with was this essentially useless machine? Society says to scrap it, hell it would cost more than it’s worth to fix it, right? But what if that car was your only option? What if that car was you, or a person you love?

The fact is that cars and things are easier to fix than people. There is far less at stake when dealing with things, and there are far fewer resources and understanding for the ways in which we deal with broken people. While it’s true that we can’t be a savior for others, we can start by acknowledging that even the most broken among us are right once, and even twice a day.

Having been formed by chaos has fueled a great curiosity within me, which has turned into a lifelong pursuit to discover what to let fall away and what to keep in light of this. I think I’ve figured some things out. I also think that there is a lot more I haven’t. One thing I do know for certain is that I’ll never run out of things to explore.

So, if you’ve had a hard time learning how to love a broken person without it breaking you, or if you’re already a bit cracked and maybe even broken, come explore this concept with me here. I hope you’ll think about that broken clock as being right at least two times a day, and that you’ll do what you can, if you can, to get it working properly again.