COVER UP NO MORE

By Christine Jayakaran

May 31^st, 2021

I haven't been able to write in a while because of a severe case of blogger's block. The past few months have been hard, to say the least, with several close friends getting sick and a few being promoted to eternity. Anxiety, worry, rational and irrational fears and in general, a feeling of doom are just a few of the feelings, not just I- but many are feeling.

Every time I think of writing, I wonder, what's the use? Who's going to read this?

Who has the time or energy to read another blog as we approach the halfway mark of another ridiculously weird year?

I finally decided to write today - more to speak to my heart than to anyone else.

We had a bunch of painters working on the exterior of our flat and watching them work has been fascinating. Their job, I thought was to repaint our exteriors because well it's old and stained from all the rains and the insane heat of Chennai. Funnily enough, they didn't touch their paints for four days, instead, I heard them pounding on our terrace walls with some instrument. Turns out that before they could paint the walls and the roof they needed to break bits of the walls that had cracks in them and fill up the gaps with cement and then seal them with an adhesive. To my initial irritation, one of the painters even did a live demo of breaking a corner of a wall to show the lack of structural integrity below the surface of an otherwise normal wall. The only sign of a problem was seemingly innocuous cracks with mild bulges in the old paint layer.

The pre-final stage in the treatment for this wall weakness was done by curing it with repeated water washes and allowing it to dry. I wandered one evening outside the flat and was shocked to see the kind of mess they had made in their efforts to 'fix' our walls. A few days later when I did a reconnaissance of the place I was pleasantly surprised to see every crack on the wall filled in neatly and evenly. Eventually, they did begin to paint and the painting turned out splendidly thanks to the surface being broken and restored prior to the paint covering it up.

I have been going over this thought in my head- that the cracks in our faith, in our character, in our relationships are starting to show in this terrifying time of history. Unless the cracks are gently exposed and dealt with, we could suffer a monumental collapse on all fronts. Homo sapiens, the lot of us are experts at cover-ups. We use filters on our off days, we crop out the dirt and grime of our real life, we smile and hide the pain and in general, get through a lot of life pretending. Pretending that we are better, stronger, wiser and more put together than we let on.

How does this help us though?

What benefit does it give us in the long run?

I for one, have realized that while the cracks are real, the time is ripe for me to deal with these mano a mano. I don't want to let these cracks grow into full-blown fault lines that could cause a collapse at a later date. As a result of seeing the cracks through fresh eyes - eyes with no filters or edits, I’ve been able to see some good things come of it.

I’m allowing myself the liberty to ask God some questions that are mind bendingly hard and beyond my pay grade (He said to ask anything so I asked). I have not received answers - I don't think I'm meant to, but at least I put it out there. I am seeing some of my tendencies to endlessly people-please through the lens of the crack-o-meter and it has been interesting to let that facade fall. I installed some boundaries in places where I felt overrun and overwhelmed mentally.

The cracks will continue to show up throughout my life and yours, of this I'm sure. The onus is on us (get it??!) to not cover it up under another guise but to look at ourselves honestly and kindly so that the restorative work continues until we are as structurally sound as we meant to be!