Beautifully broken me

Amjed: 0:01

In Star Wars Rise of Skywalker, kylo Ren has his mask repaired with these bright red, I guess, like infused cracks in there, and it's actually inspired by Kintsugi Pottery, and so I don't know if you remember that scene or seen it. It's actually looks really cool because it's got the red cracks in it. In today's episode, talking about the advantages of being beautifully broken and how I too can have my cracks filled and repaired, Hi, this is Amjad, a simple, broken man living in a complex world.

Amjed: 0:44

Join me as I navigate the dark and bright spots of life, sharing vulnerably and reflecting deeply along the way. May you find some benefit here that is through me, not from me. I must warn you to enter at your own risk, for in this room my humanity is showing.

Amjed: 1:07

Welcome my fellow humans to my humanity is showing. This is episode 42. It's kind of interesting because this is in some ways a continuation of episode 24. So 24, 42. I didn't plan that, I promise.

Amjed: 1:22

So episode 24 was published on April 10th and is titled I Am Perfectly Imperfect, in case you want to go back and listen to that one. And in that one I shared a lot about. I shared I don't know a lot, but I shared quite a bit about imperfection and the search for imperfection and being able to accept imperfection. And this week the idea for this week's topic actually started when I posted something on Facebook and a friend of mine wrote back and said you know, I guess gave me some feedback about the term broken in my intro. So in the intro I say hi, my name is Amjad, I'm a broken man. I don't remember the exact wording, but I said I'm a broken man and you know it just sounds I guess it sounds very negative in that connotation. So I say it to say you know, this is who I am and you know I'm very comfortable being broken, or well, on most days, not always and I'm striving to become more comfortable being broken, but that's. You know, that's just who I am. I'm a broken guy.

Amjed: 2:36

And so she came back and pointed out to me that maybe referencing Kintsugi pottery you know, in Japanese culture, and it's that idea of you know, when pottery is broken, to, instead of throwing it away, repairing it but, like in the cracks, making the, basically using gold coloring to our gold powder or gold to fill the cracks. So if you search Kintsugi, you'll see these bowls and vases, vases, all these different pottery that are specific, like they've got gold cracks that are just very prominent and it's a way to celebrate the imperfection in it. And I was just watching a little video on trying to get some history on it, and one of the artisans in Japan was explaining that originally, with the samurai's, that was a way for the samurai to show that you know they truly, if they had broken the king's pottery in any way, that it truly was was an accident. And a way to show that it was an accident was to repair it with the gold. And you know, as a way of repair and in some ways, you know, if I think about it, it may with the gold in it, the value may actually go up. So, as a result of the brokenness, the value goes up, and so I thought that was an excellent, excellent suggestion, because that's exactly what I'm striving for. That's exactly what I'm striving for is that comfort and acceptance of the brokenness in me, and seeing them not as flaws but rather as ways that I can grow and learn and become even better and enhanced and, you know, have a better experience or be a, you know, a better person, going forward and share what I've learned in the process. And that's, you know, in a lot of ways, what I'm doing here is sharing, sharing some of my journey. And now I say all that, and before I get too far into the episode, I need to just come clean and be authentic and transparent, which I'm nervous to do, but that's what this thing is all about. So you be, you were warned, my humanity is showing in these rooms, right?

Amjed: 5:02

So I had yesterday, I had what I call a step back I guess you can call it where I did not readily accept my imperfection. So what had happened was we were meal prepping for the week and, in particular, taking some food to my son. My wife was, you know, was planning to take some food he's in the college dorm and so he can have it and we were making different, basically meal prep, and as I was setting one of them down on the counter, I knocked it over and it went flying to the floor and I managed to somewhat catch it so that it didn't fall, you know, like upside down and all of the food land on the floor. But when it landed it just splashed and there was food all across the kitchen in two directions just a line of splatter going one way and a line of splatter going the other way and then a whole bunch on the wall. And my immediate reaction was I was so upset at myself for having made that error Just extremely upset at myself for having made that error Like how could I be so dumb to not hold it properly, to not place it properly, to be rushing?

Amjed: 6:30

I don't know what all I was thinking, but I was just really upset that that had happened and the mess. And I kept thinking this is food that my son could have been eating. Instead it's on the wall and on the floor, and this is my wife's hard work. And I went and messed it all up and I would say like maybe one fourth of the bowl made it out and the rest of it was still in the bowl. So I was really upset, needed a few minutes to kind of recuperate, but my immediate inclination. So this is where I don't consider it a total relapse of my old behaviors and maybe this is just me justifying.

Amjed: 7:10

I don't know, but my inclination was to go sit in a corner somewhere and just beat myself up and cry about how useless I am and how I can't even hold a plate of food, and that was my immediate inclination. But instead there's a healthier part of my brain that is, I guess, developing and trying to grow during all of this. That said, how about just cleaning it up? I know it sounds so intuitive, especially when I say it out loud like that, and I know to healthy people you may be listening to us going like duh. You know what I mean. Food falls all the time like why are you getting so worked up? Well, just clean it up and move on.

Amjed: 8:00

And as soon as it happened, I think my wife said oops, and I just like grunted. I was like I can't believe that happened. And so I was. I just started helping clean. I don't know that I did as much as I could have, but I cleaned as much as I could, just focused on cleaning it and putting my energy into that rather than into beating myself up for having made the mistake in the first place. And maybe an hour or two later, most of that had passed and so I was at a point where it's like, okay, mistakes happen, it could have been so much worse. I could have one. I could have lost like all the food. And my wife even said she said we could have dropped the whole pot and lost the whole entire pot. I mean we lost a very little food. And then I was thinking about it. Fortunately the food was more of a white color, like a light color, but had it been red or some really like a tomato sauce or something, it could have just stained the wall where it splattered on it could have stained that permanently, stained it red. There's so many other possibilities of how that could have gotten so much worse. And I'm still, you could tell, I'm still a little sore about it, but having the ability to forgive myself and say, okay, I'm human, it was a human error.

Amjed: 9:33

Actually, I think the first thing my wife said is she's like did you do it on purpose? And I said yes. She's like, oh, in that case I got nothing to tell you. Of course I didn't. I was just saying that because I was upset, and I was just really, really upset at my own mistake, and that's happened to me periodically, where I'll make a mistake, especially if that mistake causes harm, and I talked about that a couple episodes ago in the nine day eight issue episode that that's the thing I struggle with the most. If I feel like if I dropped my own plate of food and no one was home and I clean it up and nobody even knows that I did it and it doesn't impact anyone, has no negative impact on anyone in the family or in my life, I may not get upset about that, that may not bother me as much. I just it would be like oh noops, sorry, dropped my food and then I would clean it up. But if I feel in any way like my error caused harm, that's when I struggle.

Amjed: 10:41

So, like I said, in this case, the two sentences that were going through my head is that's good food that my son could have eaten and that's my wife's hard work on the floor and on the wall. And that's what was painful to me is, you know, there I go again and asking myself like, what did I? What? Why couldn't I have held it better or placed it better? Or you know, I don't know. You know, just, it sounds ridiculous when I say now, this literally sounds so Whiny. When I say it now like I just literally I listen to myself Sharing about it and I'm thinking, gosh Boy, you know that's really unhealthy thinking, it's very, very unhealthy thinking, but that's how I'm wired and I'm working Really, really, really, really hard that put enough, really is in there really hard to turn that and change that mindset and change that perception and not be so brutally hard on myself all the time and and instead looking at it like that kinsugi pottery thing and saying, okay, I'm broken, I'm flawed, I'm imperfect, I will make mistakes.

Amjed: 11:54

Some of those mistakes will cause harm and it's okay, you know, it's okay. It's not a Indication of my worth, it's not an indication of my value, the value that I bring to this planet, to others, to myself. It's not. I guess this is the really hard part for me, or the important part I guess I should say is it's not the reason why I should or should not be loved Because I think that's, at the end of the day, that's what's happening to me is in my brokenness. I am, you know, I just there's a part of me that says you don't deserve to be loved because you hurt people, and that's the hard part, you know. That's the part to work through and get passed to say no, I do deserve to be loved. And that's actually as this whole thing unfolded and happened.

Amjed: 12:56

I was thinking that because I've thought about this a lot. Actually, I've thought of a lot about how, when my kids were little and and they Drop something or spilled something or made a mess, how upset I would get Because, you know, all sudden, as it is, you know the kids are had a lot of energy and there is, of course, now they're adults, but when they were children they had a lot of energy and they had a lot of demands and there was a lot of work involved and taking care of them and so when they spilled something or dropped something or made a big mess, it just represented a lot more work and that used to make me very upset and I used to get very angry because it's like, oh great, now I'm gonna, now we've got to clean this up. And I have regret about that, because I think back on it now and I aspire and if I mean I'm ever blessed with grandkids, I aspire to be this way with my grandkids that you know, if they make a mess, to just smile and chuckle and and and say, oh oops, let's get, let's get busy cleaning it up instead of turning it into this whole shame event. And you know I regret having been that way with my children, but you know, and I was thinking about that yesterday, I was thinking if a child had just done this, what I just did, would I be able to just smile and say it's okay? And I've seen myself do that.

Amjed: 14:30

Actually, with children like my nieces, my nephew, you know, if something happens and, you know, make a mess or whatever, I'm very quick to be supportive and encouraging.

Amjed: 14:42

And anyone makes a mistake actually Like anyone I know makes a mistake, makes an error, causes something to happen that's gonna result in harm or extra work or whatever that is I'm very quick to be compassionate and supportive and encouraging to them.

Amjed: 15:00

I just struggle with giving myself that same level of compassion and I think that's how I was, that's how yesterday I was able to work through it, cause I just kept imagining that I was giving myself that same grace, that I was giving myself that same loving attention, to say it's okay, it's okay. I just kept in my head there was like there was battle going on. There was one voice that's like ah, you can't believe you, Look at what you did. You made such a big mess. What kind of 50 year old man can't even hold a plate of food. And then, then, the other hand, there's this other voice in my head that was saying it's okay, it's okay, everything will be fine. It's not the end of the world. It happens all the time to people all over the planet. And it's okay, it's okay, we'll just work through it, we'll clean it up and we'll move on.

Amjed: 15:56

And maybe there's something that will come out of it. That's not that negative. And I just it took, like I said, it took about an hour or two to work through that battle, to get through that battle and get to the other side, because I have a really difficult time accepting my brokenness, accepting that, how broken I am. Because when I say I'm broken, really I've been thinking about going after my friend said that on Facebook, I was thinking about going back to the if I can figure out how to do it easily Editing the intro to say a beautifully broken man, because really there's beauty in my brokenness, there's hope in my brokenness. I don't always see it and I struggle with it sometimes, but it's there, there is this, there is. Yeah, it's what makes me me, it's the thing that makes me me, cause I'm not a robot, I'm not a perfect robot, that even I think even robots make mistake, by the way. But if we get to that technology where robots are walking around looking like human beings and acting, and you know, I think robots would even make mistakes, but you know, either way, I think giving myself that grace and letting myself be loved so well, I can't think of a whole lot more to add to this conversation.

Amjed: 17:37

I know I'm a little bit shorter today than I usually am. I wonder if it's because I got a flu shot and a shingle shot yesterday and I spent most of the night shivering and sweating. It was a pretty rough night. Maybe I just don't have the energy to record a really long episode this time, or a full 29, 30 minutes, like I usually do. So I'll stop there and we'll switch over to the random message of the day. So let me reach into my bucket.

Amjed: 18:10

How's everybody doing? By the way, you know that's the one disadvantage of like this medium is that there's no opportunity for dialogue. I don't know how to figure out how to live stream this stuff so that people can chat in or comment and we can have actual discussions. You know that's that would be exciting. All right, I think I got a good mix. Okie, dokie, artichoke. Here we go.

Amjed: 18:42

This is a weird one. Work on your diplomatic skills and avoid conflict at all costs. I actually disagree with that one wholeheartedly, like I. Every cell in my being disagrees with this one. I just do not believe that that's true.

Amjed: 19:04

I think conflict is a beautiful thing. Maybe I'll share about that, if I haven't already, in a future episode, but I think conflict is just a really beautiful way of growing and learning and developing it. It's actually the that's part of my work. I study a lot about psychological safety, which is that environment in which people feel safe to speak up and share concerns, ideas, thoughts, even share their own failures, to say, oh, I messed up here and be able to bring that forward or I disagree with you. Can we talk about this? Can we work through it and make it better? I saw a quote today from another podcast that said none of us is as smart as all of us, and I think it was the Make Me Smart podcast. So shout out to that one. I haven't listened to it yet, but I just saw that quote and I was like, oh, that sounds like a really good podcast. I may have to listen to that one, but you know together, and the only way we can get there is there has to be the ability for me in groups to be able to have open, honest, difficult conversations in a respectful, loving way, and that's conflict, because conflict is not Like, because if you say avoid conflict at all costs, like this quote is saying, then what that means is like I should never disagree with you, which is a like just sounds like a terrible idea to me, a terrible idea that I would diss. Like my goodness, that just really sounds terrible. Like the whole idea that we're we're just agreeing to agree and we're not. We're not. Actually, as a matter of fact, with my team, if I say something and everybody just says okay, I get very upset and I'm like hold on, hold on, hold on. This is not going to work, because I can tell you guys are thinking something else and you're not sharing with me. So it's really important that we work through this together, because I you know, in a lot of ways I'm going to tie it back to the episode, because I always try to do that if I can Not always, but you know if it's possible In a lot of ways, when I think about my brokenness and if, going back to that Kintsugi pottery idea of like filling those cracks with gold and like filling it all in, in a lot of ways, that's where everyone else comes in.

Amjed: 21:31

You're the, you're the gold that fills my cracks. You're the the you bring, and others around me bring that extra piece that I am missing, that's broken in me, and it's together that we're stronger. And so I have to create an environment where it's okay for you to do that. It's okay for you Like I was just watching the video of you know, the pottery breaking and then this artisan putting it back together. Now I just imagine that from the bowls perspective, that's not fun.

Amjed: 22:06

You know, to get shattered and then go through this whole process where you're glued and melded and molded to get back together again. I mean that's a painful process. It's like, in a lot of ways, like glass blowing or blacksmith work, you know. Or beating metal, like heating metal up and then beating it into a shape. Or you know, I said glass blowing, where you're heating the glass up, melting it and then blowing it into a big bubble and then making changes and to it and for the actual glass that's a painful process to be molded into something else, to be molded into something better, as a painful process.

Amjed: 22:48

But I can't do I One, if I'm just a lump of whatever lump of metal, lump of glass, lump of pottery, and the only way for me to get better is I have to break first and then be put back together by those around me that I've given permission to do that. Then I can grow and learn and be a better person and vice versa. I can be that goal lining for somebody else to fill their cracks. So I think that to me personally that's just a really important part of being human is that ability to have those discussions and have that conflict when necessary. So with that I will wrap up today's episode and wish you all well and, if you are finding some benefit here, hope you come back and take care.