Breaking to become.

The LA fires have made me feel a sense of overwhelm. The lives lost, the memories lost. Lao Tzu once wrote, “What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.” It all made me wonder; is destruction always painful?

A Mother bends over backwards to give birth to a child. Isn’t that destruction of everything that she ever thought she knew about life? But then, she gives life to a new being. Would she have been able to do it without breaking herself a little? And if she did, would it have been as meritorious? Destruction does have a negative connotation in general but who is to say it’s the end? What if it’s a start?

There’s a Japanese art form called “Kintsugi” which fixes broken pottery with gold lining giving the pieces a new identity but more importantly encouraging the notion that even the destructed can be mended with a little bit of effort. The whole piece becomes more valuable because of the healed scars. Even in Hindu mythology, we have Lord Shiva who is known as the “destroyer”. But he is a destroyer for a good cause. He is known to destroy ill feelings of ego, attachment and illusion. He is also famous for his “Rudra Tandav” which is a dance of destruction he performs which symbolizes growth and transformation. It holds significance in the renewal of the cosmos.

I also believe, an important aspect of destruction is letting go of the anomalies that bought destruction in the first place. I believe life’s hardships are always trying to teach you something. Something you haven’t been able to learn no matter how many times you fell down. Hence when you’re lying there in pain and agony, there’s nothing you can do but to expect utter destruction. Nonetheless, life can never be seen through a singular view. Part of existence is the nature of duality. Where there is dark, there will be light. Where there is wrong, there will be right. Where there is destruction there will be rebirth. We all make it. At the moment it feels like the worst thing that could ever happened to you but then the next day you wake up and you eat your breakfast and you made it. It’s just a matter of time.

It seems almost normal, the art of destruction, from time to time. Like it’s a pattern of nature. Nature’s order. But why is it that we seem so distressed during tough times? Can we attribute it to something good coming along the way? After all, it takes one hell of a explosion for a supernova to form.

Images from: Cosmos