The more I live the less it feels like I know. I’ve certainly found myself struggling with who I am in this modern world and, most of all, with keeping hold of what I can only describe as some kind of innocence/love/compassion that I remember beating deep in my heart not so long ago.
I suppose we all have scars, whether they show or not. I tend to think of how so many of our bad habits can be used to hide them, from drink or drugs, anger and hate, sex, jokes, lies.
I could be wrong, it’s just how things look to me.
To me our scars can define us, from fresh wounds to centuries old ones, and from the most personal inner doubts to the most worldwide persecutions. It’s easy to categorize others, both by their wounds and their habits – victims of race, sex, disability., drunks, druggies, fools, liars.
That’s what’s hardest for me to come to terms with; the world is easier to see as packets and groups – big brush strokes of greens and blues – but it feels less real that way.
How can I take a hundred people, or a thousand, or more, wrap them all in a label and think I know them. I can’t. Every scar is individual and every wound is personal.
I don’t want to see the world in broad strokes, not even when it comes to trying to make it better, because it’s too easy to stop seeing the people who make up the painting. Every one is carrying a problem unique to them and reacting in a way that only they can, and forgetting that feels like a great disservice to them all.
Yet, even more importantly, I don’t think it’s the scars which define us so much as it is how we cope and grow from them.
Every person who’s found the strength to be themselves and reach out; every hero who’s smiled through the pain to give others strength; every heart that’s felt love in spite of the fear; every day waking and finding the strength to live when all they want is to die; these are the stories of who we are.
There’s a reason why I so want to see statues put up in place of those recently torn down. I want people to be able to say “There’s someone who had a dream”, or “They fought for their country in spite of the hate and proved to be the best pilots”, or “He swam through shark infested water to save them.”1 I want to see heroes who remind me that we all carry something good inside, not just hear how we all also carry the worst of us inside. And yes, my examples are all of African Americans but it takes but a short look to see that there are heroes who stand in every field and have overcome every possible prejudice of disability, scars or problems.
Indeed, I’d go so far as to say we all have a hero inside ourselves and that everyone we meet can be a giant and a great, even if it never shows and we never get to see it.
1 Martin_Luther_King_Jr., The Tuskegee_Airmen & Charles_Jackson_French
Musings of Waking in the World 
I enjoyed this post. It felt hopeful and optimistic. I liked what you said about putting up statues in place of the ones we’ve removed fairly recently, with stories of some heroic or inspirational person or placeholder. I’ve heard it said many times that it is better to know each other by our stories rather than our credentials, or our labels. That fits with leaving a replacement for a monument no longer there, that something that tells a story instead of a generic statement of fact, or worse yet, blank space.
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