Fixing the Leak: Embracing Life's Breakdowns

A pipe that feeds the main waterline to our house busted. Who knows why; it could have been erosion, wear and tear, pressure. A PVC pipe had to be replaced and reconstructed to integrated with our main water line in order to restore the flow of water to the heart of our home.

After 3 days without water, I really came to appreciate how a repair of a part can get a system up and running again to its full function. I had envisioned thousands of dollars worth of work that would cause us to replace all of our plumbing. Phew!

This moment of appreciation got me thinking about how this whole idea transfers to humans and how we have the opportunity to update our humanity in small ways, without having to reconstruct our whole being. When a part of our life is no longer functioning properly, that in turn impacts the flow of our existence and quality of life. After time, parts of us, whether that be an aspect of our personality, our resilience, our physical abilities, our defense mechanisms, our way of communicating, etc; no longer serve us. Often times, we ignore the signs of a break down and come to think of it as our new normal. Perhaps we think that broken part of us is too entrenched and it would take a mammoth excavation to fix the problem. Perhaps we think we are incapable of repairing something about ourselves. So we live with it.

What if we inspected our lives for cracks, identifying their causes and repairing them? With the right tools, we can measure for a perfect fit and carefully attach new pieces, allowing us to restore the flow that sustains our quality of life.