💔 You’re not as broken as they say

The Book of TREE 1.14

You may not be as broken as you think.

So much of our society operates this way:

Guess what? You are broken!
Here is how you are broken.
Here is how we will fix you.
Give us money.
Amen.

Why is ‘you are broken’ so popular? It sells. It sells beauty products and diet food and religion and programmes and books and illegal butt-growing drugs. ‘You are broken’ is an effective story because a lot of times, it feels true.

Is it actually true?

When you get sick, do you get better?
When you sustain an injury, do you recover?
When you feel strong emotions, do they fade after a while?
When you face something beyond your ability to handle, do you seek help?

If you answered yes, you are not broken. Congratulations! You are a normal, functioning human.

Why this matters:

1. It gives you sales resistance. If you’re not broken, there is a whole world of products you don’t need anymore.

2. Reality is the best starting place for personal growth. Typically, ‘getting real’ is framed as facing negative truths about yourself, but it works better when you face all the truth about yourself, including your not-brokenness.

3. Climbing a mountain is just as much work as climbing out of a hole, but it’s more fun.

I loved this podcast episode about Dr Bruce Murray. He provides healthcare for homeless people in Grants Pass, Oregon. The reason he’s able to do that is that he’s in the ‘middle’ that Steven wrote about on Wednesday. Both Bruce’s story and Steven’s post highlight why FFOREST exists. I want to help people to thrive at being themselves so they have the capacity to do beautiful things and fuck shit up in the most life-affirming ways possible.

My final BSL Level 2 exam was last night. Next week, I will at last be able to get stuck into this worry and anxiety project I’ve been talking about for ages.

Happy weekend
Jeff