Ailsa’s Travel Theme Challenge: Broken

The moment I saw the challenge “Broken”, I knew exactly the photo I will use. I thought I’d look for a beautiful quote to go with it, instead I found these paragraphs. I didn’t realize I got it from a blogpost and then I couldn’t find the exact entry.

The post says something about lessons to be learned from a broken shell. I think her words resonate to many of us and even a broken shell can give us some important lessons.

I began to pick up those broken shells, seeing a different perspective that others overlooked. “See these colors.” “Ooh, look at these – how beautiful!” And a few steps further, “Feel this one,” as I rubbed my thumb back and forth across its smooth surface, comforting like a worry stone.

We are like those seashells. We don’t get the option to stay on the beach, comfortable, warm and unaffected by the ebb and flow of life. Instead we must face the surf, overcome the riptides of calamity and disaster to offer value and beauty to those whose paths cross ours.

Some of us seem to have ‘perfect’ lives, yet we’ve been through the surf of situations and circumstances that tossed us about and left our emotions behind with the tide.

Some of us are battered by life, dull and chipped like that sand dollar. We’ve lost the polish of loving kindness – replaced with the grayness of anger, bitterness and disappointment, grief and regret.

Others are broken – eroded physically, mentally, emotionally or financially. Our lives, our ‘shells’, are no longer what we had expected. We’ve been washed ashore by waves of time and circumstance. We wait, broken and alone, for someone to pick us up, dust off the grit and remind us of our innate value and beauty.

I’m sure we’d all rather be like seashells in the Beach Store: perfect, polished, costly. But Life’s tides don’t give us that option.

The next time you see people or circumstances that aren’t what you want or expect, remember the lesson of the shells. They were all perfect once. Yet, even battered and broken, they add to the ambience that is Life. Every seashell – if it could talk, would tell you a story of joy and sorrow, ebb and flow.

365 Project: Day 264