We are antifragile objects. Strengthened by strain and stress. Made better by disarray.
We are fibrous and fluctuating. Irreducible to the whole. Irreducible to our parts. We harbor an inexhaustible depth. A surplus beyond the shards. The unfathomable excess of who and what we are.
Though shattered and scattered, "Every fragment does not have to be relocated,” John O’Donohue says, in order for us to be complete. It is a matter of collection and connection. It is, what Nick Cave calls, the "complex reordering of ourselves". Our deepest mystery is that we cohere. We persist. We endure. In richer amalgamations. In more complex arrangements. We are more beautiful because of the breakage. A galaxy of dust and stars.
Restoration isn’t repair. It’s redemption and return. A return to the site of annihilation, in order to reclaim the wound. "Healing”,
says, “is figuring out how to coexist with the pain that will always live inside of you…It is learning to confront ghosts and to carry what lingers." Learning to bless your demons. To know them by name. To regularly meet for tea."[T]o be truly vulnerable”, Nick Cave says, “is to exist adjacent to collapse or obliteration". To be baptized by fire. Enveloped in flames and not consumed. To be vulnerable and impervious. To be invincible and exposed.