Beautifully Imperfect

“We are all wonderful, beautiful wrecks. That’s what connects us – that we’re all broken, all beautifully imperfect” – Emilio Estevez

 

                  A friend of mine shared this quote with me. It immediately struck me. What does it mean to be a “wonderful, beautiful wreck”? I think it means we are all human. None of us have it all perfectly together in life, but that is okay. Often, I blame my depression for the struggles I experience. This quote made me pause and wonder if my depression is solely at fault.  Maybe I struggle because I am human, and the depression is just an added difficulty. 

                  Being human means we can experience life with cognition. That cognition separates us from animals.  We can understand the joys and pains of life. Well, maybe not completely understand why they are happening, but we can understand that they do happen. Those pains are the broken parts of us. The pains are different for each of us. Every one of us experiences life differently. Still, we are beautiful in our humanness. 

                  We are connected in our brokenness. Each of us has experienced some type of struggle in our lives. The struggles vary in intensity, but we all struggle at times. Even the seemingly perfect lives we see on social media experience struggle. I think people spend too much time trying to connect to the good things we see in people’s lives, even though we are more connected in the struggle. The social media influencer who shows all their “perfect” moments isn’t sharing their struggles. Not every moment is perfect. If I took a picture of myself right now, I would look happy. I am in my favorite place writing. What you wouldn’t see in the picture are the thoughts created by depression and anxiety that are filling my head. The same is true of most social media posts depicting “perfect” lives. They give us a false image. Where are the posts showing our brokenness? That is what makes us human. In overcoming the brokenness, we demonstrate our beauty. 

                  So, often we try to connect to each other’s perfection. Where we are connected is in our brokenness. We are connected in our striving to be whole. Our imperfections make us who we are. I think about my depression. It is a negative, an imperfection. At the same time, it creates my worldview and makes me who I am. I am “beautifully imperfect”. I have struggles in life. It is in striving to overcome those imperfections that I create the life I was meant to live. 

                  I have been sharing my story of life with depression for many years now. When I first started sharing, I was afraid. I didn’t think people would understand. I thought I would be looked on with derision. I didn’t want to be pitied. I wanted to be understood. What I found through sharing my story is that I am connected to so many more people than I could have imagined. As I shared my story, people responded. People understood and told me they had similar experiences. It was the brokenness that connected us. But that brokenness turned out to be beautiful. We shared pain and in doing so found healing. 

                  Sharing my story has taught me that I am not alone. Depression and other mental illnesses impact the lives of many people. Each one of us is a “beautiful wreck”. It makes me think of the ancient Japanese art, kintsugi.  In this artform broken pottery is repaired using gold to fill the cracks. This creates a beautiful object. Even though the piece of pottery is broken, it can be put back together and become a work of art. This is true of our lives. When we work on healing, when we connect to others who are broken, we become “beautiful wrecks”.  Perhaps, there is nothing more beautiful. 

 

 Kintsugi