Damage control
If you’re a human being and you’re living life, you and all that you hold dear will take some damage. You don’t have a choice.
My (almost) four-year old’s knees were like porcelain until he learned to walk, jump, run, and skip. Now they look like a Michigan road that’s been patched with asphalt a few times.
Life is happening, therefore damage is happening.
By the time we’re in elementary school, most of us are already expert at damage control. We learn how to anticipate and avoid damage. My best friend, Jimmy, was always breaking arms (three different times!) and getting stitches climbing trees and riding horses. Jimmy apparently couldn’t learn, but I did: I haven’t been on a horse since about third grade.
You know it’s not just physical damage we learn to avoid.
I was as in love with Jill as a boy can be. My infatuation with her lasted from about first grade through sixth grade. There were a couple of others during those years: Heather and Rachelle. Alas, my affection was unrequited. I learned that expressing my feelings to a female ends in emotional damage. So I spent most of the next 20 years hanging around girls and then women without ever actually telling them how I felt (until it was too late).
If you’re a perfectionist with a “Type A” personality, you know how easy it is to procrastinate. You would rather suffer the self-imposed damage of falling further behind schedule than suffer the damage of trying something and failing. At least then the adrenaline kicks in at some point and helps you do what you need to do. Somehow, your mind concludes that being sloppy at the last minute feels less bad than giving it your best and your most and coming up short.
I confess that I’ve lived my life in a back-and-forth frenzy of damage avoidance followed by damage control. As I said, if you’re a human being living life, it’s impossible to avoid damage. But avoiding damage actually increases the odds of suffering damage (and the need for damage control). Sometimes, the damage of avoidance turns out to be worse than the damage of going for it.
I’m 40 years old and I still see that pattern of damage avoidance and damage control dominating my life. These days, I tend to put off doing hard work that I’m afraid will expose my flaws and shortcomings. I’m afraid the final outcome will be failure. You can see how avoiding the damage of failure actually increases the odds of it. I know this in my head, but my poor perfectionist heart is not a believer yet.
What is the antidote? What is the solution?
When avoiding or controlling damage is the default in our lives, fear controls us and drives us. Avoiding dying (emotionally, physically, socially) is not the same as living. If fear is the constant background noise in our souls, we aren’t living life so much as we are dying through it.
Love may not be the diametric opposite of fear, but love does at least reside in the neighborhood across the tracks from it. After all, it’s love that we fear losing in the damage. Even (and maybe especially) our self-love. We teach ourselves to control damage because we are ultimately afraid of losing what is most precious to us: Love.
Taking on damage as we grow up teaches us to be afraid. It teaches us how to be aloof, hard to penetrate, skeptical, street smart. It teaches us to be content consuming our lives through distractions and entertainment rather than live our lives risking everything for love.
Once we recognize this as adults, we come to a fork in the road. The easy path–the one most will take–is to get on the fear bus and ride it all the way to the end. Watch life like scenery passing by the window. Fear is the driver. You’re wishing that fear is a good enough driver to avoid accidents.
The other path is crooked and narrow. Only a few people choose this path. It is the path of faith. You don’t know what’s down there. You walk rather than ride a bus. You don’t have a map; only a compass. And that compass always points in the direction of love. You will go through some scary places. You will suffer damage. But you will be fully alive. Fully. Alive. This is the Gospel of love. This is the Gospel of everlasting life.
Grace and peace to you.