Salvation
I know what it’s like to see a broken thing and love it and dream of the life where it is made whole. It’s a noble instinct and one you should frequently indulge. You’re great at healing and you should share when you can.
But only if you remember that you can’t save anything. It’s easy to become entwined with a thing you know could be better, if only it had the chance and the right motivation. To imagine that if you do just the right thing – take charge of the right parts, lay out a path toward improvement, become responsible for the bits it can’t do alone, relieve the pain that keeps it in distress – that you might be able to save it.
But that’s never true, no matter how hard you wish, and trying is a path to your own ruination. Healing only ever comes from within. Even with help you can’t save a single thing, not from the outside. No matter how much responsibility you take for it and yourself and even the whole world, you can’t make things whole. None of us can.
I don’t say that to discourage the effort – the attempt to give something the space to grow and become what you hope it might be. Everything deserves a chance. Just remember that all you can do is support, not direct. Often it’s possible to put yourself in a position where you feel responsible – where others treat you as responsible – for the path a wounded thing takes. It can be easy to believe that you have the power, the duty, the option to make the thing better. But only it can change, no matter how much you care, no matter how much work you do, no matter how much you make it your own.
So fight, where you can, where it matters, where you have power, to support things that need help. Enlist others in your cause. But imagine that the best you can hope for is to offer protection and aid while the thing changes itself. You aren’t responsible for the change, even if you’re elected king of of improvements. You’re here to mark the path and lay out supplies and shout encouragement from nearby. But the change isn’t yours. Not even with an army behind you. Change is internal, and nothing you do will ever let you save any thing that does not find a way to save itself.
Letting go of a thing you love – a thing you cannot save – is no small feat. Not when you know how good it could be. Not when your dreams for it, for the way you hope it can make you feel, are so close. But in the end it’s the only path. You don’t have to abandon it. You don’t have to cut it from your life. But you have to accept that it’s not you, and hence not yours to save. You have to accept that it’s broken, and adjust your life to keep the sharp bits away, to keep them from cutting you.
If you find yourself in the place, remember that I know a lot about letting go. Just like you might have help in supporting a thing you love through a change, you can have help with yours. Help with letting go of the the dreams you risked, and help finding the shape that keeps you safe. Help finding new dreams that fit the shape you have to be. It’s sad to give up a hope that you built and invested in, but it’s also amazing to imagine a new hope and find new ways to invest. Let me help you find the next heist, and to free yourself from the parts of the last one that no longer fit.
Things happened today. I did my noon meeting but not much other day job. Finally got back to robots and did most of what I hoped for. Got confirm that my dragon would not be here tomorrow but should next week. Imagined war paint for the Science Center party tomorrow. Ditched a monitor, walked with Dog, ate a taco, had some thinks and feels about @BPS in https://youtu.be/POfYXytId6k Tomorrow is a Dog cleaning and helping C with homework and makeup and a science party. Tonight is a drink and some sleep.
ZiB
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Sent from a phone.
