Unarmored

Just as I got to work today I burned a finger joint on the steam wand. I've burned myself a lot in the past, but this was probably the first time I got it on a joint. It then proceeded to be a real annoyance throughout the night, because the position meant it wouldn't heal as easily.

I finally got home, and the cold gave me an excuse to soak under the hot shower for quite a bit. The burn on my finger had hardened a bit by then, like an armor. It then occurred to me that I've been pretty close to blowing off at (old) work from anger in the past two days. It's been busy, stuffs been happening, and I'm on my way out so it was all a bit of a drag, and it got to me a bit. It occurred to me that every time something pisses me off I almost immediately switched to combat mode. I always take the simplest path in combat: one-hit kill, as-short-as-possible combat. In any conflict, that's always the simplest and cleanest way to go. The problem is, we're not at war. We're civilized people living in a civilized land and an (arguably) civilized time. I understand that my kill-or-put-up-with-it way of doing things is bad for my health, so to speak. But why is it so easy for me to drop back down to that way of thinking?

Like the hardened skin on my finger, I think it's just because things get easy when you're armored. A skinny geek in a tank can still massacre half of Auckland easily. It's easy to be confident and to assert yourself when you hide behind an armor, a hardened skin, a defense mechanism. But relationships between people asks for something different. You can't touch each other with your armor on. The closer you get, the more armor you'll have to shed. And then at one extreme, my idea of Love, the whole thing has to go off. That's probably my biggest problem right there. Nakedness is a scary thing. Being defenseless is not comfortable. We were born naked and we cried. It's uncomfortable being naked in this harsh world. We were born naked and then we were clothed. And then we grow up and gradually we shed our clothes to show more flesh to the world, but the clothes and armor have moved inside, from shielding our skin to shielding our hearts.

Genesis wrote that once Adam and Eve realized they were naked they became ashamed and hid from God. But I've never read the original word, so I can't be sure if the story really meant that they were ashamed. What if they weren't so much ashamed as they were afraid? Afraid that they got found out, for one thing. We hide our thoughts from each other so we can move around easily. Me, I hide my heart away so it isn't easy for it to get hurt. Shedding my armor and defense mechanisms make me vulnerable. But if we were born to hide away from each other, wouldn't we have been born with hardened skin? Instead, we were born soft blobs of pink flesh straight into the mercy of strangers. We were born vulnerable. Why is that?

My best bet is that this is a straight reference to Love. You need to be naked to be receptive to Love. It's hard to show that you love someone if that someone refuses to be touched, inside more than outside. Some couples survive long distance relationships, but nobody survives a relationship where neither side opens up.

So what has my burnt finger taught me? Hurt hardens you. The more hardened you are, the safer you are against outside threats. But until you risk softening up, you are unlovable. And you cannot love until you have been loved first. The energy has to come from somewhere, you can't give what you don't have. It's easy for me to say, but I'm nowhere near there yet.

I used to be my own protection
but not now