Begin Again, Just Like Nature

I came across this cactus on one of my recent morning walks. It doesn’t look like much—no pretty flowers, catchy spines, or stylish shapes. Instead, this prickly pear looks quite bedraggled and scrawny. But here’s the thing. It’s growing tons of new pads—the equivalent of new branches. Despite having been torn apart by human machinery during some recent earth-moving, it didn’t give up. Instead, it chose to begin again.

This common prickly pear is doing something that most of us do several times in our lifetime. Something dramatic tears us apart, causing trauma and even lasting damage. At that point, we have a choice. We can give up, or we can begin again.

One human story comes to mind. I got to know Robert Fusté when he worked as an intern at the CAC. A few years ago, a car accident left him paralyzed from the chest down. But that didn’t stop him. In his words, “he accepted the challenge to continue and expand his work as a filmmaker.” He began again by founding ParaShoot Media to support storytelling from new angles—including his own.

We regularly experience this as communities too. I frequently consider the many ways that the USA will have to begin again. On the other side of countless layers of trauma that both everyday citizens and governmental institutions are experiencing at the hands of incapable and corrupt leaders, we will have to begin again. It will be a long journey. As a culture and a country, we will not look pretty for quite a while. We are no longer the poster child for success on the world stage. But at some level, we will persevere. To do that, we will have to begin again, over and over and over.

Last week, I pondered the changes that come with the passage of time. Sometimes those changes are slow and inexorable, while other times they are quick and devastating. Regardless of the damage, as long as we retain the breath of life, we can begin again.

When has life dealt you, or your community, a serious setback? In what ways did you, or can you now, begin again?