The Grandeur of Fragility by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Water is mighty.  Water was the birthplace of all life on our planet. Water regulates the world’s climate cycles and makes it possible for the matrix of life to exist. Twenty-thousand years ago, ice moved across the Earth creating the planet’s landscape of mountains, lakes, rivers, lakes and oceans that bring us awe in their majestic beauty.

Water is also fragile. Water evaporates and disappears from our sight during the laziest summer day.  Frozen water, ice, can shatter into shards at the slightest tap. With just a few degrees of extra warmth even great glaciers disintegrate and slide into the ocean. Water is elemental to much of our species and planet’s fragility, whether there is too much of it in a flood, or not enough in a drought. In just a couple of centuries, humans have endangered water all over the globe through pollution and other actions. 

I began to ponder this duality of water, both mighty and fragile, a few months ago when water, in the form of both snow and ice, took me down, literally, physically and spiritually. Some months ago, while shoveling my driveway, I stepped onto a patch of ice hidden under the snow and with an impressive boom lay sprawled on the frozen, harsh pavement in pain. I crawled over to my car,  pulled myself up, and after a couple of weeks recovered. But at that moment I had to accept that my legs had grown increasingly unsteady over the years; that I could not keep going on and on doing all the things I had always done, no matter what; that I was fragile and not just in mobility, but in many ways I had been ignoring for a long time.

So, there it is. I am fragile. By this I mean that my well being and future are not guaranteed. I can shatter, disintegrate, disappear, and be taken down by a tiny patch of ice. Having finally begun to acknowledge this, I feel as if I am now, though well into my seventh decade, finally transformed into the beginnings of a real human being. I wondered, can I, and everyone, like water, be similarly both fragile and have the potential for such immense good for ourselves and others?

And I realized that all human beings on this planet are fragile in one way or another, but how many people would say, when asked how they are, “Well, I’m quite fragile today, and everyday,” however true it may be? Some forms of fragility are considered by some in our society to be weakness, such as being physically frail, while others, like rigid thinking that can hide brittleness, are perceived to be signs of toughness and strength. Over time, we may lose fragility in some ways as we grow wiser and and more spiritually and emotionally resilient, while, at the same time, growing more vulnerable in body and cognition. 

When society deems some people fragile and others not we are engaging in unrealistic dualistic thinking, especially when we put judgmental labels on those two extremes. In reality, everyone’s fragility is a continuum, a continually evolving set of characteristics everyone has.  We may be more fragile at some times than at others, like when we are lying in the snow after a fall, but “fragile” is a term that can apply to most everyone in some ways all the time.  So, I came to see, I am not simply “fragile;” because of it, I am human.

Further, I realized that not only are all humans fragile, but so are all living beings just by being in a body and having a mind. This is the cost of existing on this planet in this physical realm, as part of the matrix of life. It is what allows us to cherish each day, smell the fresh spring air, touch a gentle hand, taste an orange as the juice sprays our faces, knowing that these experiences are limited and so not to be wasted. Without our fragile physical beings, we could not have lives on this planet full of meaning and joy, we could not be of service or have an impact on the world. So, I came to see, humans are not simply “fragile;” because of it we have the great honor and privilege of being alive and part of the Earth’s web of life.

But, finally, I understood that when fragility is combined with love it transforms into a force that protects and nurtures life. Love is the partner that makes fragility mighty. If our climate cools enough for glaciers to stabilize it will be because humans are expressing their love of the planet and the life on it. If we come to love ourselves and other living beings in a healthy, nourishing way, then our fragility will be motivation to seek out experiences that enhance our ability to strengthen and cherish our bodies, minds, and souls and those of other beings. Because our fragility makes interdependence key to our survival, it causes us to make loving, compassionate connections with one another and beyond humans. So, clearly, we are not simply “fragile,” but often, because of our fragility, we, as loving beings, are indispensable to the co-created universe. 

So, perhaps we can ask ourselves “What if we lived in a world where the transformative power of fragility was equated with strength, persistence, grace, wisdom, and the basic humanity of everyone, with the beauty and miracle of life for all beings?” Perhaps such a world is not unimaginable. Expressing the fragility that is rightfully ours and combining it with love goes hand in hand with our agency to our small part of the world a better place just as water, in both its delicacy and might, enables our world to host all living beings. In this moment, when the survival of water as glaciers, oceans, and rain is literally the key to our own survival on this planet, I am grateful to water that shows us the grandeur of fragility in all its forms.