The Broken Beads

 

The beads were broken,
scattered one by one,
and I began to mend them,
slowly, patiently,
one piece at a time.

Perhaps the thread had snapped.
Perhaps glue was all that could hold them together.
Perhaps I had to change the design completely.

But somehow,
in the spaces between the broken pieces,
a different kind of beauty began to shine.

The broken beads were not thrown away.
They were mended.
Rearranged.
Held together in a new way.

And strangely,
the story I received from my Guru
felt as though he had read my mind.

I had been carrying the Astral Bar in my thoughts,
holding on to something that felt beautiful and untouched,
until life, and the weight of work,
slowly frayed the thread that held it together.

Broken by the job that held me.
Mended by the Guru who told me.

Perhaps that is what life is sometimes:

not returning the beads
to exactly how they were before,

but finding a new thread
and learning how to string them together again
in a different pattern.

And the mended beads seem to laugh,
not because they have forgotten
that they were broken,

but because they survived.

No one looking at them
may ever know what they went through,
or how many times they nearly fell apart.

They only see the beauty
of the beads still holding together,

never the broken thread
that taught them how to shine.