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The broken chair in my life

By Shumaila Irshad
30 August, 2019

We all know that all people are different; they are different in nature and react differently to same situations.....

PERSPECTIVE

I was having my breakfast when I saw a chair in the corner of my room. It had always been there but somehow today I noticed it for the first time; I felt its presence there. We have a lot of things in our homes and in our lives, but we don’t notice them usually or value them or try to link them with the different ideas of our lives. So, this morning when I saw the chair, I had this thought about those feelings (I call them “mini heart attacks”) when you sit on a broken chair and you try to get up as quickly as possible to save yourself from falling down, to save yourself from getting embarrassed even when you are alone in the room. Those feelings are just one-time thing. You can never have those feelings again even when you sit on that same broken chair again, because now you know about its state; you know that it is broken so you will be subconsciously alert.

We all know that all people are different; they are different in nature and react differently to same situations. Similarly, everybody reacts differently to that broken chair. Some of us are too afraid to sit again on it. Some of us try to sit on that chair but may not feel comfortable, knowing the chair is unstable. And some of us, who don’t learn from experience, sit on the chair like it has no defect and fall to the ground like they did before. This whole idea made me think about how similarly we react in different relationships in our life. It made me realize that trust is one thing common in sitting on a broken chair and keeping different relationships in our lives.

When we trust somebody in our life, a relative or a friend, and somehow they break our trust, if we wish to normalise things again, we try to be positive. We tell our selves that that particular relationship is worth a lot and we should not let our ego come between us. It’s just because we love them so much that we don’t want to sever our relationship with them. In such cases, some of us are so afraid to get our heart broken again that we never let that person in again in our lives even when we still love them as much as we did before. Some of us are ready to trust again but subconsciously we know that this is our broken chair. We are like “I am showing some trust in this person but I shouldn’t forget about the first time, when he broke my heart. This will save me from the same intensity of pain, at least”.

All of you out there might not agree with me, but I believe all of us are not brave enough to let the broken chair of our life go away, no matter how ugly it makes our room look. All of us are not able to follow the inspirational quotes like “If you love something, set it free; if it comes backs it's yours, if it doesn't, it never was.” ? Richard Bach

No! I’m not strong enough to let it go, even though I know how toxic it is to my life and my soul. I’m alert now but getting my trust broken by a particular person didn’t change the amount of my love for him. I still value relations in my life more than my ego but this time I’ll be more careful.

I have heard that you can’t love if you don’t trust that person completely. That’s not true! Sometimes when your trust gets broken you can’t delete all the love from your heart but you become alert to some extent. And this is what I call the “broken chair state of our lives”. Have you seen yourself sitting on a broken chair where you trust the chair enough to sit on it but there is still that fear of falling to the ground? Don’t you have the same feelings while trusting again the person who broke your heart? Admit it or not but you are alert! I hope I’m not the only person with this thought in this world.

And some of us are too blind to see and trust that person like he has done nothing wrong! Now this is something that can bring some irreparable damage; falling to the ground from a broken chair and getting your bone fractured is certainly not a pleasant prospect. Not everyone is brave enough to handle that embarrassment. But I must say we can call that person blind but trusting, and I am sure that person has some real courage. He is the bravest of all. He can still find beauty in life.

All of us have broken chairs in our lives. We can chuck them out, or be careful with them. What we do with the broken chairs in our lives is something that is entirely up to us. So, what do you want to do with the broken chair in your life?