Sunday Quote Returns with a Little Rambling....

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

 

Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)

 

I've been thinking about the word "character" a lot lately. What does it mean? How do I view my character? How do others perceive my character? And how do I continue to grow my character into something I can be proud of? That my girls can look up to? 

 

When I found this quote from Helen Keller, it struck me that your character truly is your soul....It's rooted deep inside you. Every experience, moment, occasion in our lives shapes & moulds us into who we are & who we will become. 

 

We pray for joyful, positive experiences in our lives that will create within us a character that is open, strong, & hopeful. But sometimes in our lives there may be pain & darkness that can scar our souls. And sometimes it's easier to perseverate on the scarred pieces of us, rather than the beautiful. 

 

 This weekend I attended a class on grief, loss, & trauma work in Play Therapy. One of the activities we did was called Flower Pot. In this activity we were provided a terra cotta flower pot. We noticed its smooth, round surface; no jagged edges. We imagined the flower pot was our lives, ourselves. The flower pot was then broken with a rubber mallet. We were told to decorate the broken pieces with art materials, then glue the flower pot back together. This proved not to be the easiest task because the terra cotta shattered in places, leaving jagged edges & fragments so small there was no way they could be put back into place. Once the flower pot was glued back together we observed the cracks, the imperfections, & the empty spaces that didn't exist before. But glued back together, the broken pieces still formed a flower pot. It just looked different. It was altered & may not be able to perform its original function, yet the basic form of the flower pot remained. And if you looked at the individual pieces, they were beautiful: vibrant colors, sparkles, poetic words were now just as much parts of the flower pot as were the imperfections. One group's flower pot was broken into so many pieces it was impossible to put them together properly to regain even a semblance of its original shape. Rather than give up on their flower pot, they simply placed their smaller pieces inside the largest piece & lovingly tied them together with a lavender ribbon....

 

If we look at the altered flower pot as our character, our soul, we can begin to see the beauty in each piece. In every fragment is a lesson to be learned, a new path to be forged. For a long time I chose to focus on the scars & defects in my character. The painful occurrences in my life began to shape my soul & define me. It was somehow easier to handle these than to actually admit there are beautiful, wonderful &, dare I say, damn fabulous pieces of me. This activity reminded me that although I am not the person I once was, or who I thought I would be, my soul remains vibrant, sparkly, strong. 

 

Just like the flower pot.