Doesn't Take Much

But we are fragile, aren't we? It doesn't take much to rip us up, and it's even worse when it's more than a lot.

I remember once I was standing in the living room and I had broken a piece of my mom's china. I don't know where she got it from, but she put it on the bookshelf for safekeeping and I accidentally nudged it enough that it came falling down. Even though it fell on carpet I guess it was fragile enough to break into several different pieces. And I just remember standing there trying to put all the pieces back together, but I didn't have enough hands to hold them all together. And even if I had more hands it wouldn't have mattered because that china wasn't going to grow back together. I never told my mom and I wonder if she ever noticed it was missing. If she did, she never said anything.

This past year or two has been a lesson in human fragility. At school I see misbehavior in students and I immediately start to wonder what must be happening to them outside of school to make them act like that inside school. It could just be that some kids would be messed up no matter what, but I think a lot of it has to be cause and effect.

In my own life I can see myself trying to hold all the pieces together, just as if they were pieces of broken china. But I don't have enough hands, and I don't know if I can get them to stick back together, anyway. When I look up, though, I see lots of people around me trying to do the exact same thing. Maybe what we all need is an extra set of hands, but everyone's got theirs full already.