Scars

Wounds heal if the body is otherwise healthy. No matter how jagged the ends of the tear, they do come together. What one is left with, is a scar however. It may be unsightly or it may be barely noticeable but it is there for all time. Sometimes the scar is so slight one forgets the story behind it. At other times, the scar is a ropey discoloration that stands out on your body so that you cannot ignore it for too long. It doesn’t hurt any longer of course but it never lets you forget.

The scars I have are reminders of people I love not being there in my life anymore or of disappointments so severe that they take ages to get over. One is forced to leave friends behind while moving from one country to another. One is forced to leave family behind when going to some unknown place as a new bride. One is forced to realize that people considered to be friends actually aren’t. One is forced into the choice of leaving a loved one because circumstances dictate it. One is forced to lose a beloved parent to death itself. All the scars still exist within me. The stories behind each are remembered – every single one. The curse of having a good memory is that nothing is forgotten.

Having passed through various painful patches in my life, I am a veteran of scarred landscapes. I have a few years of smooth sailing sometimes and then I get hit left, right and centre by strong winds, heavy seas, icebergs – the whole lot. For years thereafter, its one thing after another that doesn’t go my way. And then for a while the seas are so calm and beautiful that all the previous agony is almost forgotten in the bliss of utter contentment. Just when one gets to that complacent stage, lo and behold – there comes another iceberg out of the blue. This is probably every man’s journey but here I can talk only of my own.

Will thinking differently change the way I view my scars, I wonder! After all maybe real life is all the stuff that hits you when you least expect it – the rest is merely a coffee break. If that is the case, it would be more sensible to use the breaks to renew oneself instead of imagining that they are what life should be and then growing soft so that the next storm hits harder than it might had you been more prepared.

Scars build character though. Mine are unique. They make me what I am. I feel privileged to make mistakes and learn that its alright in the long run – nothing is as dreadful as I make it out to be. My overactive imagination and ridiculous ability to take blame makes it very hard for me to forgive myself. I now realize that that is really rather silly. If I continue to blame myself endlessly, I neither get anywhere nor do I gather the strength to surpass the mistake itself. Perhaps scars are reminders to go easy on ourselves. “Look at us”, they seem to say, “we are part of you – don’t regret us”. If I can learn to view my many scars as reminders to be less hard on myself, as milestones of learning, as a testimonial to being merely human, I would not hurt myself each time I see them...