Zenitude #37: Sand Dollar "Zerrissenheit"

A beautiful, empowering friend reached out to me the other day and inspired me to write. Over the past two weekends she has been on a beachcombing mission. Ah, a quest to find a “perfect-as-possible sand dollar.” This morning – success! One small tiny hole, but otherwise near perfect. She writes, “Alas, it’s not enough to hold my quest’s success and enjoy it by myself. I must post photos, share with the Facebook world! And while positioning it for the photo opp, I knock it to the ground. It breaks, small pieces scatter.” (Actual picture is shown.)

For an instant, as I read her words, I felt my heart scatter for her. But, it was only for an instant. My mind immediately thought of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s book from 1955, “Gift From The Sea” and how this "shattering" experience is not about loss or grieving her sand dollar casualty. It’s about the incredible joy in her spirit when she found it. How she must've smiled, jumped up and down, fist pumped the sky while saying YESSS! But it was a temporary gift.The sea is gracious, constant and forgiving and her temporary “gift from the sea” is a validation of other “beaches to explore…and more shells to find. This is only a beginning.”

In 1955, Anne wrote that “woman’s life today is tending more and more toward the state William James describes so well in the German word, ‘Zerrissenheit – torn-to-pieces-hood.’ We can’t live perpetually in Zerrissenheit. We would be shattered into a thousand pieces. On the contrary, we must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifugal forces of today.” In other words, pursuits that move us from our center will leave us shattered, scattered. If your life feels “Zerrissenheit,” step outside of yourself, find your lost pieces and start centering – one broken piece at a time.

Perhaps the shattered sand dollar symbolizes how she has been gathering lost pieces of herself back to her center through her chosen times of solitude. She is moving away from a state of Zerrissenheit and the masses (i.e., Facebook World) are not always entitled to a piece of her. They just aren’t. We live in a world of instantaneous sharing, but breathing in the moments without the notion of sharing is a novel concept, don’t you think?

So my initial sweet-loving words of wisdom to my friend are as above. But there’s always the candid "tell it like it is" side of our friendship that simply says to her, “it happened, it’s the past, there’s nothing you can do, move on, quit your crying, go find another one or three sand dollars, hold your solitude more sacred next time, and I want to see your broken sand dollar. It’s broken and beautiful.” Love you, B.

Zenitude for today:

If your life feels “Zerrissenheit,” step outside of yourself, find your lost pieces and start centering – one broken piece at a time.

(Actual picture of B's shattered sand dollar.)