Bodies Already Broken

Last month I bought a bird bath. It’s small, about a foot and a half tall, and deep blue, the blue of Greek seaside towns (ultramarine to be exact). I placed it in the front flower bed, filled it with water, and poked my head out of the front door every once in awhile to see if I could catch a bird mid-bath. No such luck. After a week or so I moved the bath a few feet over, somehow believing the birds visiting our bird feeder would catch sight of it more easily in this new location. Still not one bird.

Every few days I checked in on the bath, scraped out dirt, added fresh water, until one day I saw that gorgeous ultramarine scattered in jagged shards across the cement. It had toppled out of its flower bed and crashed into 20-some odd pieces, collected solemnly by yours truly. What a bummer. The only bright side was that it jogged my memory of an old story I heard once about things that break.

It goes like this (From Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective by Mark Epstein):

“‘You see this goblet?’ asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master. ‘For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”’

The bird bath’s lifespan felt so short, too short. But perhaps if I could have seen it coming and accepted it’s ultimate state of brokenness, in the meantime enjoying its beauty for the sake of its beauty, regardless of bird activity. Because even though I didn’t get to witness a single bathing bird, the time for me to enjoy the bath’s beauty was already running out. Whether it would have been full of bird friends, or still and solitary, the clock on this earthly possession kept ticking.

Surely this story seeks to teach that everything, everyone, we hold dear in this moment, will ultimately shatter, so to speak. That this flurry of life and emotion is but a blip, a blink of the universe’s eye, over before we know it. But the lesson I learned today was different, it was a lesson about bodies. Even more of a unique treasure than a little ultramarine clay bird bath is the human body. A masterpiece of science and art, no two alike. But sometimes our bodes aren’t how we wish to see them either. Like the birdbath, up until this point my body might not have been doing what I wanted it to, serving the purpose I thought it should. Whether our body is right or wrong compared to whatever standards we, or society, has prescribed it, it surely is beautiful in its very own right, just for existing out there in the garden. And here’s a reminder — its earthly clock is ticking.