Last summer, on a hot Saturday morning I was at the Farmers Market in my hometown and I came across a booth filled with jewelry. This wasn’t any normal type of jewelry either, each piece was completely unique from the other. As I gazed at the display, internally crying because of the lack of money I had in my possession, there was one particular piece of jewelry that caught my eye. The moment I saw it I knew that I was going to buy it, despite my near-empty pockets.
With the sun beating down my back and beads of sweat rolling off my forehead I asked “How much for this ring?” The elderly lady who looked somewhat like a gypsy who was running the booth replied “Oh you don’t want that ring Hun, it’s broken.” On closer examination, I noticed that it was in fact marred. The stone had a small indention in the center where it looked like a sliver of it had been chipped off. I had not even noticed the indentation because I was so focused on its uniqueness overall. The ring had an intricate silver band with delicate patterns etched into it. I had never seen so much detail put into one piece of jewelry before. The top part of the ring was in the shape of an oval and wrapped around the oval stone was a corded piece of metal. The most alluring part of the ring, however, was the stone in the center. The stone was the part of the ring that was damaged but I didn’t care. At first glance the color looked like it was a dark emerald green but when you moved it around it changed to a sea green. The color never stayed the same.
Being enraptured from the beginning, I knew I had to purchase the ring. “I’ll take it. How much?” I said to the lady. “Well since it’s damaged, I’ll give it to you for $4,” she said. A bit surprised by how low of a price she was asking, I hesitantly accepted.
As soon as I purchased the ring, I put it on and went back to perusing through the Market. The whole time I was walking I kept thinking about what the old lady said. It was broken. It was a broken ring. I couldn’t understand. It didn’t seem right. I couldn’t grasp the idea that someone wouldn’t want a ring as beautiful as that just because of a minor imperfection. The fact that it wasn’t perfect was what made it so great. The little divot where the stone was cracked was one of the most important parts of the ring. It was what made it unique and gave it character. It was a simple crack, a simple imperfection but its beauty was anything but simple.
Every time I’m feeling insignificant, I think back to this ring. And I think it’s something we all can relate to. Maybe we think that we are broken, or made up of so many scars that there is no redeemable quality left in us. We think we are defined by our imperfections and are so terrified that no one will ever see past what we consider as damaged that we don’t let ourselves even try. But in reality, we are wrong.
Our scars are what make us beautiful, our marred spirits worn down by continual detriment. That is what people will see. And that is what will consume their entire being with awe. Because the fact that you have faced so many challenges but are still here, fighting, is beautiful. The stories that your scars tell and the strength that you emit because of it, is beautiful. You are a force to be reckoned with. Just like the ring, we all have some sort of mark, but that is part of what makes us beautiful. We are all a little broken and that’s not just okay. It’s beautiful. It’s real. It’s human.