Noticing What Needs To Be Fixed

Fixing broken things is not an activity that most of us enjoy.

The plastic knob on my mixer broke off, and I didn’t celebrate that I would need glue, a clamp, and time to fix it.

What I said to myself was, “I can live with it. Who needs a knob anyway?”

But the shower stopped working. And since not having a shower was not something I was willing to live with, it got fixed. (Thank the gods for a handy husband.)

However, it wasn’t until I pulled the shower knob and water came out in a satisfying powerful stream that I realized it had been broken since we installed it. I had never liked that water came out of both the faucet and the showerhead at the same time, but I accepted it.

I believed living with it was easier than fixing it. Until it stopped working. But was it?

Living with what is broken ranges from being mildly annoying (the crack in my sunglasses, which I barely notice anymore) to uneasy feelings, to higher stress levels, to outright dangerous.

The show “Challenger” has reminded us all exactly how dangerous it can be.

After reveling in a perfect shower, I decided to notice what else was broken and fix it. Yes, the knob on my mixer (once again a handy husband) but other things too.

I noticed that what I had been giving myself to do every day was crazy. I had kept adding to the list, not noticing the stress I was causing for myself.

So I fixed it by taking things off that weren’t useful, or didn’t have to be done every day, or I didn’t love as much as I thought I would, reminding myself that I can’t do everything. Or at least everything well. This will be an ongoing process.

But being the wise person you are, you know that I am leading up to talking about what is broken in our country. It’s been broken for a long time. Or at least cracked.

And most of us said we could live with it, and besides, we didn’t know how to fix it.

Now it is obvious. It’s broken. And we can’t continue this way. We can’t have sides fighting to the bitter end. We can’t be taking up arms against each other. We can’t let differences of opinions widen so much that families, friends, and nations break apart.

We have to fix it. And the only way to fix it is to begin with ourselves and move out from there.

This does not require us all to agree on everything. In fact, it is the difference of opinion that builds stronger unions and creates solutions that one “side” could never come up with on its own.

It’s our differences that should unite us, not divide us.

To make super glue, you have to add two different elements together to make it work.

Standing on a line in the sand or saying “you’re wrong, and I’m right” does not unify. It separates. Evil, in whatever form it takes—and whatever you want to call it—does two things really well. It separates and creates doubt.

I doubted the shower could get better. Yes, an insignificant problem compared to a country taking sides. But symbols are here for us to learn from.

If we are broken inside with hate, stress, fear, or doubt, this is where the “fixing” begins.

Love is the only power. Find something to love about the person you like the least. There is something, and you can find it.

Expand that. Embrace the idea that communities based on kindness to each other can fix what’s broken.

But it takes each one of us, one at a time, to decide to stand for unity in love. And we can celebrate and be grateful that we have the opportunity and responsibility to do this, one drop of glue at a time.