Originally Posted by LifeRecovery

Firesprite-

I almost posted this with another one of your questions some time ago, and I will apologize for the length up front.

This is part of a chapter from Saki Santorelli's book called Heal Thy Self, Lessons on Mindfullness in Medicine. For me the story though helps me to define self-love but it is hard to not include the other purposed of Mindfullness and MBSR in the health care practioner/patient relationship.

Seven A.M. Driving to work on the Mass Pike. Heading east. I turn on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. Today the journalist is in Chicago. He weaves this tale: A large, prestigious museum in Chicago raise a lot of public and private money to host an art exhibit. The chose as the theme for the exhibit the works of "disabled" artists, sent out a hundred invitations to exhibit and received no takers.

Perplexed, anxious and probably scared, the museum curator and the board of directors, with a lot of money and reputation on the line, decide to get to the bottom of this. The answer seems obvious. they discover that none of these highly accomplished artists, many of whom have shown their work internationally, wants to exhibit under the rubric "disabled." Months later, after much persuasion and negotiation, a well-known artist who also has a "disability " consented to exhibit his work. Following this opening, other artists accepted and the exhibit is filled.

The radio story picks up with the commentator walking through the gallery on opening day, describing to the listeners what he sees while having conversations with some of the artists. (I removed a paragraph for brevity)

Next we hear about a sculptor. A large, powerfully built man who fabricates and welds metal, building huge and sometimes towerlike structures. We find out that this sculptor lost his leg some years ago, is unable to wear a prostesis, and continues to sculpt with one leg. He is asked if his work now is different from when he had two legs. The man responds, clearly, deliberately. "This is what I do now: This is normal." We come to find out that the sculptor has been chosen to create the centerpiece of the exhibit. He has sculpted a sphere out of stone, perhaps marble or granite. We are told that it was perfect, with an uninterrupted smoothly polished surfaced. After the sphere was completed, the artist smashed it, then put it back together with bolts, metal fasteners, and bonding agents. Now---full of fractures---it is sitting in the middle of the gallery, in the middle of America, labeled SHATTERED BUT STILL WHOLE.

Hearing this, as I'm traveling at fifty-five miles and hour, shatters me. My chest is split wide open. I slow down, tears pouring out of my eyes--out of all of my fractures---cascading onto my shirt, tie and lap. Turned inside out by the tears for me, by tears for all of us. The river behind these teardrops feels immense and impersonal. These tears are not the old familiar ones that flow from tributaries of self-pity or anxiety driven thirst for that which I don't have and personally want. This flow is far more universal. It is a grief-bearing river. The shudder, the melting tell me in an instant that this membrane of personal history, erupting into the truth of our collective condition.

This is every person's story. (paragraph removed)

SHATTERED BUT STILL WHOLE

With more ferocity, mercy and compassion than ten thousand words could have conveyed, this recognition penetrates. Like mindfullness practice, the story helps everyone in the room remember that having a serious illness and being treated in the mainstream, academic medical center need not, like amnesia, numb us, nor further intoxicate us into a deep, sleepy forgetfullness of our inherent wholeness.

But too often, driven largely by time, training and uncertainty, health professional lose sight of or turn away from the deeper mission of engaging in the intimacy of suffering--our own, and that of those who seek our care. By necessity we have developed a vast reservoir of knowledge intended to relieve, and in some instance cure. But, like a double-edged sword, this knowledge can easily bind us to the shattered aspects of these human beings before us while simultaneously blinding us to their---and our-- deeper, intrinsic wholeness. Most often this reactive conditioning arises out of fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the uncomfortable. Fear of helplessness. Fear of our own broken places. Yet, if we do not carefully attend to this within ourselves, we treat ourselves and the ones seeking our care unjustly. Refusing, mostly unconsciously to acknowledge and enter our own brokenness, we remain numb, distant, and most often, cynical.

The rest of the chapter is more on the patient and caregiver relationship but like the Japanese art of adding beauty to a broken object this chapter helped me to sink into self-love is sitting, tending, respecting and eventually loving all the fractured parts, that together make me whole.

Thanks for reading.