How My Life’s Purpose to Have an Unbreakable Heart Left Me Broken in Life

Ever noticed how people who are afraid of having their heart broken often end up feeling broken? Until recently, that was the case for me anyway. I was always striving to have an unbreakable heart — but never quite succeeded. What did it mean for me to “have an unbreakable heart”? For one, it meant that I was always trying to protect my heart from everything and everyone. I thought I could achieve that by not letting anything or anyone in. You’ve probably heard about the concept of “building walls around your heart”. That’s what I was doing. I built high, wide, fortified walls around my heart — walls that would even make the Great Wall of China look small.

Another way I tried to reach my purpose of having an unbreakable heart, was by never asking for help. And if someone offered me help, I would politely turn it down. I always tried to do everything by myself, not accepting help from anyone, thinking that that would make me strong. I thought it meant I was independent — and “when you don’t depend on anyone, they also cannot break your heart”, I told myself. Nor did I ask any questions. Because asking questions also makes you look weak and helpless, I thought. In short, I was isolating myself, keeping a safe — or so I thought — distance between me and everyone around me. A type of “social distancing”, but not because of any virus. I guess another, more relevant term for it could be “emotional distancing”: Maintaining a distance between me and other people, to not have to feel any emotions, while consistently fooling myself that I didn’t need anything or anyone. The more I practised this emotional distancing, the better I became at fooling myself.

“From an early age we become skilled at shielding ourselves from vulnerable feelings like disappointment, hurt, and diminishment. We build protective walls from behaviours, emotions, and thoughts; and use it to protect ourselves from the big, bad world. But to live and lead with courage, as we’ve all learned, we need to rumble with vulnerability. And one of the best ways to begin this journey is by recognising the blockers from preventing us to being more open and being more vulnerable. And the key blocker is perfectionism.” — from Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

My quest for an unbreakable heart expressed itself in another way: I always put a smile on my face. Always the same forced smile. Ever saw the “Madagascar” movies? The ones with the penguins? There’s one scene that has stuck with me up to this day: When some disastrous event has just happened and one of the penguins says to the others, “Just smile and wave boys, smile and wave.” That was me! No wonder that the scene seems to have been written on my heart: I could relate to it so much. Now, most of the time I left out the waving part — though not always — but I really took the “just smile” concept to heart. Did you somehow manage to embarrass yourself in front of your whole class? Just smile! Are you going through a rough phase in life and deep down inside of you really feel like crying? Just smile… Your roommate unexpectedly took your food from the fridge? Just. Smile. Just smiling became my way of life. Or, as I understand it now, it was my way of surviving because, to be honest, I was not actually living.

What else did I do to reach my purpose of an unbreakable heart? Hide my feelings and emotions deep inside of myself. It’s like I locked my heart and threw away the key. Nothing was allowed to enter — hence the walls — but I also didn’t want to allow anything out. Showing feelings and emotions was extremely dangerous, from my point of view. It would make me vulnerable and weak. Speaking was another one of those dangerous things. “The less I say, the better.”, I told myself. I started this behaviour from a very early age, saying the least possible in order to protect myself from harm. People often asked me, “Why are you so quiet?” I usually responded with silence. As I started my journey of mental and emotional healing as an adult, I frequently wondered, “What happened to me in my early childhood, that I became so terrified of speaking?” A topic I would like to explore here in a future post. For now, though, we’ll keep focusing on my aim for “the unbreakable heart” and how that left me broken inside.

“Oh, if only I was more broken…”

So, let’s move on to a topic that I think is quite sensitive to most of us: Being broken in life. At least, personally I haven’t met many people who get very excited about brokenness, who just cannot wait to be that person who’s lost, broken, and defeated. Just imagine it for a moment… “Oh, if only I was more broken…”, now, how often have you heard anyone say that? As human beings, we generally don’t see it as a state that’s very pleasant to be in and we’d do anything we can to avoid it. Neither does society see brokenness as very admirable or desirable — at least as I understand it. Sure, society can often push us in that direction, but once we’ve reached it we generally won’t get a pat on the back for it from that same society. My point is, that we tend to see being broken as something negative, rather than positive. Something unacceptable and thus something we should not be. Which is exactly why I want to ask the following questions: Is being broken really that bad? Or could it actually be a good thing? Or perhaps we can move beyond seeing being broken as either good or bad, and instead see it as a state that can be approached in many different ways, depending on how we choose to approach it.

The thing is, I don’t see being broken as something we should avoid completely or at all costs — like I had been trying for most of my life up to now, with little success. In fact, I’ve come to realise that brokenness is not something we can prevent entirely, as if it’s somehow part of this life on earth. As a result, the more we try not to be broken, the more broken we seem to become. After having tried this myself for many years on end, instead, I’ve been learning that what I need to do is to let go, to accept, to embrace, and to let things flow. The more I try to hold on to things, the more they seem to slip. But if instead, I carefully start to open up my hands, slowly, bit by bit; but fully, until they’re wide open, I can start receiving and I can start to handle things as well. What’s more, things can also flow through my hands, and from my hands — I can even start to give to others. As I’m writing this, I cannot help but think, “It’s funny, isn’t it? We often think, “The more I hold on to things, the more I will have.” And yet, the opposite appears to be true.”

Before we go too deep into the open-hand metaphor, however, let’s go back to the main point “at hand”: Even though it feels scary and counterintuitive, we might wanna embrace whatever brokenness we have. We shouldn’t let it overwhelm us, nor let it define everything we do and say, but we should at least not block it out completely and pretend it doesn’t exist. Alternatively, we could begin by accepting that we all have some brokenness inside of us. From the acceptance, we can then move unto appreciating that the parts of us that are broken are part of what makes us who we are. Next, we can find ways in which we can use our brokenness for good. There’s a metaphor that for me describes this concept very well: Clay pottery that has cracks in it. Take a jar of clay, for instance: It is fragile, it often has some cracks in it. To many, jars of clay might not look particularly beautiful and the cracks can be seen as undesirable. However, when we stop to think about it more deeply for a moment, is the outward really that important? What if there are treasures inside of the jar? With a perfect jar — from the outside — that has no cracks in it, it can be hard to see what is on the inside. But when there are some cracks, we can start seeing the beauty that’s hiding on the inside. Likewise, a person who tries to have an unbreakable heart can be very good at hiding what is inside of them. However, those who allow themselves to be a little bit broken here and there, with some wounds and scars, can let their light shine through. They have treasures to share, though they might not know it (yet), and the cracks help to show those beauties bit by bit. But when you keep all those walls around you and never open up, you might never find out what you’ve got hidden inside of you — nor will anyone else around you ever know about the amazing things you’ve got concealed in your heart.

Should We Give in to the Push for Invincibility?

All that being said, it seems to me like this world often thinks that we should be unbreakable. That human beings are supposed to be striving for a kind of “invincible” state. But are we really? What happens to us in the long run when we follow that path? We might wanna think twice about it before we start heading down that road. I was on it for quite a while and I can promise you, I was not doing well. My pursuit of unbreakableness was affecting me in many ways: I spoke very little, I barely showed feelings or emotions, I found it hard — if not impossible — to connect with people, and I always had the same forced smile on my face. Now, I don’t know about you, but I struggle to find human traits in the “person” I just described. The description, to me, resembles more closely a robot, that only speaks when necessary and is devoid of any real feelings and emotions. So, if we strive to be unbreakable, who — or perhaps “what” — do we become? As individuals, but also as a society as a whole. I think these are questions well worth considering if we value at all who we are as human beings, or who we are meant to be anyway. What if we can no longer truly connect with each other? What if we all put walls around our hearts and let no one in? What if we stop allowing ourselves to be broken? What if have been turning everything upside down and we’re failing to see that perhaps, perhaps being breakable is what makes us human? This in turn leads me to ask: Are we really willing to give up those things that make us human? What is the alternative that awaits us if we choose to go down that path?

Whatever the answers are, do you also feel like this world is increasingly telling us to “act tough”, “be strong”, and never show any signs of weakness? As you may have noticed, I definitely do. In a way, I feel like society is constantly pushing us to be unbreakable. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being strong and courageous. On the contrary, we need strength and courage to live well in this world. But just because being strong and courageous benefits us in life, doesn’t mean we should strive to always be strong and courageous. Without a counterpart, strength and courage soon lose their meaning. In fact, neither can exist without having weakness and cowardice on the other side of the spectrum as well. Put shortly, we will be striving for something we can never reach, setting ourselves up for failure. We are imposing an unrealistic image on ourselves — or letting those around us impose it on us. Instead, we could aim for a more realistic, healthier approach, one where we allow ourselves to be both weak and strong, cowardly and courageous. Embracing that we don’t need to be either all the time, but rather that we can be both, according to how we need to be and who we are. We can learn to see that strength and weakness both have their value, which frees us from the limiting, binding expectation of always having to be strong.

“What is it that makes you feel vulnerable? Even though vulnerability is a universal feeling that we all experience, we still sometimes associate it with weakness or feeling inadequate. We worry that admitting that we don’t know all the answers will make us look stupid. The result is that, rather than exposing ourselves to others and allowing for moments of genuine connection and problem solving, we reach out for our emotional armour, so to say, we put it on and, in doing so, we create a barrier between us and our co-workers, we create a barrier between us and the challenges that we face, between us and our emotions, between us and true moments of understanding and connection with our team.” — from Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

Maybe one of the most famous phrases in the history of humanity is, “No man is an island.” — to get back to the island theme (remember Madagascar?). But what happens when we try to have an unbreakable heart? We isolate ourselves and make ourselves into an island, an island where nothing will grow. And we start feeling miserable and broken. Because, let’s face it, no human is an island, no one is meant to be an island, and when we try, it does not go well for us. We will reach the point where we’ll have to realise that we do need each other — not to survive, but to live and to thrive.

You know, it’s funny, for most of my life I thought people wanted me to be unbreakable. I thought, if only I try harder and show myself strong, independent — even perfect in a way — then people will accept me. But that never happened. On the contrary, I was very good at driving people away. Which actually seems like the logical effect of putting walls around you, trying to keep everything and everyone out. But I really thought that people wanted me to be someone who “seemed to have it all together”, someone who showed no vulnerability.

Now, for the first time in my life, I’m discovering that, actually, nobody wants an unbreakable heart. Some might think or say that they do, but when they’re around someone who’s trying to be unbreakable, they soon find out that it’s not really what they want. They cannot seem to connect with the person, it feels like they need to pull the words out of their mouth, and they wonder why there’s that constant, non-changing forced smile on the face of their company. Maybe they start to feel uncomfortable, bored or they simply find the other person weird and awkward. Next, they’ll start looking for ways out. The unbreakable heart ends up alone — again — and wonders how come they feel even more broken, not less (maybe they need even higher and wider walls?). For a long time, I didn’t get it. I was convinced that I needed to be the tough way I was and perhaps I just wasn’t trying hard enough. Maybe it was also willing blindness: I didn’t want to see that I needed to open up, let down my guard, and just be; out of fear that I would get hurt, out of fear that people wouldn’t like nor accept that real me. But I’ve been letting go of those fears, slowly discovering that, indeed, nobody wants an unbreakable heart. Instead, I’ve been showing myself vulnerable to the people around me, and — to my surprise — I feel less broken, not more. It’s like opening up and allowing myself to be breakable has been healing my brokenness. Not all of it, of course. Part of my healing journey also has been embracing that I’m a little broken. But ever since I’ve let go of my goal of being unbreakable, things have actually been getting better, not worse.

So what’s the final verdict? It’s all about having a healthy balance. We don’t need to be strong all the time, but we also shouldn’t stay stuck in weakness. In life, we need a little bit of both. We need strength to achieve things in life, but we need vulnerability to be able to connect with others. We need courage to make a move, but sometimes a lack of courage can lead us to new directions in life we never would have imagined. In fact, choosing to be vulnerable actually takes a lot of courage — vulnerability is not a sign of weakness, as we often seem to think. In short, finding our personal healthy balance in life can help us cultivate both our strengths and weaknesses. We need both chaos and order, working together harmoniously in the intricate dance we call “life”. Instead of striving to be unbreakable or broken, we can look for our own middle way. In other words, we can learn to just be who we are, with all our little cracks and big treasures, simply embracing the unique — and wonderfully human — beings that we are.

To end, I’d like to leave you all with one last quote from Dare to Lead by Brené Brown:

“Being vulnerable is an act of courage. It involves saying what is on your mind and being honest with yourself and your team. You know, the word “courage” in its original form comes from the Latin word “cor”, or “heart”, and it means to “speak your mind by telling your heart”. That’s really nice, no? Vulnerability is your winning hand, it’s the cornerstone of human innovation and creativity.”

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This post was inspired by the song Unbreakable Heart by J.J. Heller and the book Dare to Lead by the author Brené Brown

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