Cracked Vases

My friends, Peter and Pat are a married couple that, taken together, probably represent almost a hundred years of professional experience as film and video producers. In fact, much of what I know about visual storytelling, I learned by observing Peter when we worked together back in the 1980’s.

Those were the days when we were all young and working on shoestring budgets. The technology was nowhere what it is today, so creativity was essential to make stories compelling. We were also taking risks by working without the liability insurance that would have eaten a large chunk of our meager profits.

On one occasion, Pat was directing and producing a marketing video for a local business. The business owners happened to be friends with a wealthy entrepreneur who offered the use of his spacious and expensive home for the video shoot.

As both producer and director, Pat had an abundance of responsibilities — from ensuring that every scene effectively communicated its part of the overall story, to managing the video, audio, and lighting crews as well as the on-screen talent.

At one point, the video tech reflexively made an adjustment to the lighting. If you’ve ever adjusted lighting in a video or photography studio, you know you move the light fixture while focusing your attention on the lighting change to the scene rather than watching the fixture itself. Unfortunately, in this case, the other end of the moving light fixture swept an expensive vase off the mantle and to the floor.

The good news was that the vase didn’t contain the ashes of anybody’s dead loved-one. The bad news was that the vase was seriously expensive. It wasn’t merely an item purchased by great grandma back in the early 1900’s and handed down, avoiding entropy by spending its life behind the glass door of a china cabinet. It was a genuine antique. Moreover, the cost of having an experienced art restorer rebuild the vase was considerably more than Pat profited on that particular job.

Us — You and I
You know I rarely write only about things — even expensive things. I prefer to write about people, and it occurs to me that you and I are much like that vase, albeit not entirely shattered. We were created in the flawless image of the Author of the Big Bang, but due to genetic bottlenecks and mis-folded DNA (Nature) … or to the inexperience and carelessness of our parents, and siblings (Nurture) … or maybe just our own egos, we’ve all developed cracks.

Not unlike the Grecian urn pictured above, those cracks impair the storyline of our lives. Consequently, we exert great effort to camouflage them, whether consciously or unconsciously. I do it; you do it; everybody does it.

Don’t believe me? If you’re willing to risk your soul and sanity, try spending some time in the Purgatory of social media where every blemish and age line are Photoshopped away, every weekend getaway is spent at an exotic locale, and every coffee shop selfie includes a perfectly steaming cup of kopi luwak (yeah, look it up). Sidenote: I probably wouldn’t object to violence against the sociopath who invented the selfie.

Contemporary Westerners spend so much time manipulating our façades to cover up our imperfections that psychiatrists and psychologists have come up with medical terminology to denote that activity — “Bullshit”. And the problem with bullshit is that is stands out for its pungent “aroma”.

What if I told you I can smell your BS a mile away? What if I told you I already know you can smell mine too? The problem is that we’ve each become nose-blind to our own coping mechanisms. If I can tell you’re faking it and you can tell I’m faking it, even when we don’t recognize our individual fakery, why don’t we just start a 12-step recovery program where we get together and engage in absolute, non-judgmental honesty? We could call it “BSA” for short.

Imagine how much stress would disappear from our lives if we didn’t have so much BS to manage every day. Imagine what it would be like to actually own our fears, our biases, and our moral shortcomings without the fear of being judged because everyone else in the group would be engaged in the same business of self-assessment.

Back to That Vase
Lately, I’ve been watching my wife, Paula working on some hand-made pottery. It’s tedious, tiresome work that requires ten times the patience and skills I possess. Now imagine a little Chinese artisan squatting in a primitive hut in the thirteenth century and toiling away to create an exquisite vase. No modern kilns. No sanitized, off-the-shelf clay. No motorized pottery wheels. They may have only completed a few dozen ceramic masterpieces in their lifetime.

Is it any wonder that the modern owner of that antique vase recognized its value and expended the resources to have it restored. Is it any wonder that the Creator of the universe is willing to go to such extremes to restore His human masterpieces, all of whom have become cracked and some even shattered?

Let me know when that BSA meeting is happening. I’m looking for a reliable sponsor.

A meeting of great minds who think alike