One of our children broke an arm two weeks ago (hence the missing post that Friday). As people found out about it, I heard many stories about how they or their children had similar experiences. After having these stories shared with me, I felt a sense of fraternity with a new group of people. It reminded me of something I posted on my first blog, which wasn’t about marketing or business… just life. I thought I’d re-post it here today:
Scars
The other day I was shaving and ouch!! I cut my chin. I looked in the mirror and realized that I cut myself because of a scar. The skin was raised a bit by the scar and the blade just nicked it. This scar was the result of an incident when I was two or three years old. While running through my grandma’s kitchen, I tripped and bust my chin open on her linoleum floor. Most people don’t even know I have a scar on my chin. It is on the bottom of the ball of my chin and isn’t noticeable unless I raise my lower lip upward dramatically. I don’t even notice it very often. I hadn’t thought about it in ages, yet it was still there waiting for a hasty blade to bring it to my attention.
We all have scars. Some are from childhood incidents like mine. Others are even harder to see. They’re emotional, psychological, or spiritual. Nevertheless, they are still scars and they wait for some hasty action, ill-spoken word, or reminder of the past to reveal them.
As a volunteer drama director I see this happen occasionally with actors. We will be working on a scene and something triggers an emotion… the actor loses it. We usually take a break and I talk with the actor. Often, something in the scene or about the character revealed something to actor about his/herself. Not surprising since that is what most writers attempt to do. They want people to relate and respond to the story and/or the characters.
My wife Tammy and I were watching Message in a Bottle one evening. Although it is a rather drab movie with suspect acting, there was a moment that shot me to pieces. (Warning: Possible spoiler if you haven’t seen the movie.) One of the characters receives a phone call to find out that a loved one was killed in an accident. On the surface this seems like nothing incredible. This happens in other movies. This time though, I fell apart. The phone call reminded me of one I had received a few months before. A call telling me two friends of ours had died in a plane accident. The scar was reopened without warning and quite abruptly.
What do we do? We can’t walk on eggshells around everyone worrying that we might unwittingly tear open what time has worked so hard to heal. This would paralyze our ability to communicate and ultimately connect with people.
The best answer I have comes from Lethal Weapon 3 (not a typical fount of wisdom, but give me a moment). There is a scene in this movie where Mel Gibson and Renee Russo’s characters start showing their scars to each other. They take it to extremes by beginning to disrobe, but that’s beside the point. They share their stories through these scars. This is where they fall for each other. Why? Because he relates to her. She understands where he’s been. They connect. What if that’s the point?
What if we have the scars so we can share them with others? So we can relate to one another. Sharing our hurt and hopefully our healing with people who may have similar stories of their own. It’s hard. There’s a fear that people may be disgusted by our scars or maybe they will reopen the wound somehow. That fear however, should not impede us from sharing with the right people at the right moment.
It may be worth a nick on the chin to engage someone’s heart.