Scars

The guy was slurring his words and speaking a little too loudly. With a tongue loosened by alcohol, he felt free to say whatever was on his mind – and he took the opportunity to tell me exactly what he thought of me.

This happened at one of my wife’s work events many years ago, when I found myself cornered by someone who’d been hitting the open bar pretty hard. I was in my late 20s at the time; he was about 20 years older, and a lifetime of hard living showed in his creased face. We’d never met before, but after talking with me for a short while, he felt he had me sized up pretty well.

“You know what your problem is? You’ve got no scars,” he told me.

I bristled at the notion that I’d never been injured. Pointing to my lip, I said “You don't know what you're talking about. I got hurt playing football – I broke three teeth and had a chunk of my lip partly torn off. I needed plastic surgery to sew the lip back together. Yeah, I've got scars.”

He shook his head. “That’s not what I'm talking about. I’m talking about the other kind of scars. You've got no life experience. Everything’s come easy to you.”

The younger version of me was too proud and arrogant to let his point sink in. But in the years since then, I’ve come to appreciate the truth in what he was telling me. He was right: Everything had come easy to me at that early stage in my life. I'd worked hard, but all the pieces fell into place so easily – like playing a card game where you're dealt nothing but aces. That guy at the bar was able to smell the smug self-satisfaction in me instantly.

Well, he'd be pleased to know that I’ve gained my scars over the years. I’ve lost loved ones who’ve died. Along with success and happiness and good things in life, I’ve suffered disappointments and setbacks and heartaches and tragedies. I’ve had physical issues to deal with, including my current bout with blood cancer. Like all of us who've tasted both the bitter and the sweet on life's plate, I've got scars that run deeper than any physical wound.

And those scars have made me stronger.

The writer and philosopher Kahlil Gibran said, “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” 

In his own way, that’s what the drunken guy was trying to tell me all those years ago: It’s not our successes, but our scars that make us who we are.

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 Photographer’s Footnote: I photographed the scarred door shown above on a trip to Spain in 2010.