“We are all just a car crash, a diagnosis, an unexpected phone call, a newfound love, or a broken heart away from becoming a completely different person.
How beautifully fragile are we that so many things can take but a moment to alter who we are for forever?”
A poem by Samuel Decker Thompson
I came across this poem while scrolling through my Facebook feed the other day. The dear young man who posted it mentioned it being his favorite quote. I knew nothing about the author or even that it was a poem until a quick Google search today showed that it was a poem entitled “Fragile.”
And while I believe these are beautiful words, and were probably written in a moment of pain or anguish, I can't agree with them fully.
I hope neither I nor the author believe them at their core otherwise we are each doomed to a life of fragility and disappointment! For who of us has control over natural disasters and, to an even bigger extent, the choices made by the people around us?
I believe that who we are is much deeper than the experiences we have in life.
Who we are shapes how we perceive the world around us. Who we are tells us whether we let another person's actions dictate our view of life and the world (as in loving someone or suffering a broken heart).
But I don't believe we are so fragile that we must bend and bow to every gust of wind that blows misfortune our way. Young plants actually NEED the wind in order to grow strong. Without the stormy and winds, they grow weak and cannot support themselves.
Who we are is more concrete than our circumstances.
Our circumstances can change with the weather, with a car crash, with our health. But who we are, at the core of our being, is how we handle the circumstances we encounter. Sometimes our core being needs to change, but we get to decide when and if that happens.
We have free choice over who we are in this life.
We can choose to be fragile, or we can choose to withstand and overcome.
We can choose to give in to temptations and habits that don’t serve us, or we can choose a new course in life that allows us to find peace and fulfillment.
We can choose to remain bitter and discontent in the face of heartache, or we can choose to move forward and show the world how much love we can give.
We can choose to let a medical diagnosis defeat us and strip us of our joy, or we can choose to press onward, never giving up, and make the most of every moment we are given.
We can choose to disrespect our fellow man and the feelings of others, or we can choose to show goodwill and benevolence (the Greek word “agape”) to everyone unconditionally.
The past couple of weeks have dealt me a couple of pretty intense emotional blows. I offer these words from a period of deep heartache in my life; a period that I don't want to define me but rather want it to be a page of challenges I've overcome because of who I am inside. I choose not to be shaped by these events.
Who I am shapes how I move forward from these events.
I hope and pray the same for each of you.
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