I don’t remember the flight but I look back on it now and wish I had it on film. The numbers have gotten fuzzy with time but it seems to me that I flew about 100 feet. Ok so I wasn’t challenging the Wright brothers record but in the spirit of accurate comparison, they did have a plane. I was just launched through a bus window doing 60ish mph down a cliff. The bus followed closely and may have overtaken me if it had not been for the very large rock we both stopped at. I stopped at the foot of the rock in a crumpled pile and the bus stopped at the high point of the rock leaning directly over me. I was nonsensically babbling and speaking more incoherently than normal up until the time they placed me on the helicopter to go to the hospital. My head was banged up, my ribs were in bad shape, my shoulder felt like it was no longer attached, and there was a gaping hole in my arm. Beyond that I was ok.
Years later I was reflecting on the scars that were still visible. I have two small lines on my right cheek just below my mustache that I see each day I shave and my right arm has a healthy divot drawing an L around my elbow. They have served as a reminder and sometimes a painful one at that. But one thing is utterly true; they are not something that happened to me, they are a part of me.
I had a history professor in college who said “We are the sum total of our experiences”. At the time I was wondering if the experience in that class would ever be useful but thinking back, I learned far more in the class then just facts about the Maginot Line and Germanys driving tactics. I learned that the scars on my face and arms are not just visual markers; they describe part of who I am.
It is far too easy to deflect pain and sublimate bad experiences into the darkest recesses of our minds but if we do that, we run the risk of letting it shape us without our even recognizing it. We kid ourselves sometimes in the deflection by saying that other people have it worse so we are just not going to let things bother us. Simply put that is scary.
I was in a Pavilions parking lot today and saw a homeless man trying to light half a cigarette that he picked up off the ground in the rain. He definitely has it worse than I do right now. I would be a fool to think anything else. But there is no comfort in that thought. His discomfort in no way elevates my comfort. Knowing that somebody else is in pain does not decrease mine one iota. If we follow this logic that recognizing others have it worse, we also need to recognize that still others have it better. If my load becomes lighter recognizing that someone else has it worse then my load should also get heavier when I see someone else who has it better. The relativity of our position to another person in discomfort has no bearing on how we should feel or the problems we have.
The only way to grow as a person is to allow the problems you have to shape you into a better version of yourself instead of lesser version. This sounds overly trite and almost insensitive but truth is usually blatant, we sometimes just learn to ignore it. We need to become the person we want to be. It is not just going to happen. George Saunders said that character is the total of moments in life that we cannot explain. I love that line. I am not sure I agree with it completely though. Character in and of itself is the thing that comes out of the fire. I cannot explain how it is formed but I am pretty sure I know the ingredients that went in. Character has a direct correlation to scars. The things that form the scars typically form character as well.
When I look at the life of Christ I see scar making throughout it. As a child his parents did not understand him. The educational system at the time was sorely lacking to the point that he was teaching others at age 12. When he started his own ministry, many including the social and religious elite of the time rejected him. He was next to homeless for years and found comfort in having a rock for a pillow. His closest followers whom he called friends ran off the moment things got real. He was a walking scar map in many ways. His scars were just a real as mine. I think he handled them differently though. Somehow by the very thing that caused him pain, he was able to show compassion. By the very things that created scars he healed me. I am not sure I understand the logic but I am grateful that his scars tell a very different story than a lot of mine do. Maybe I should do something about that.
the christian philosopher 