Sometimes I forget that bandages don’t heal a wound.
They only protect the wound from dirt or futher hurt,
While my body’s natural resources,
sometimes aided by antibiotics or other medicine,
do the healing.
I say only protect, but protect is not only.
If I remember my old courses in formal logic,
protection is a necessary but not sufficient condition for healing.
As security is a necessary but not sufficient condition for learning.
As repentance is a necessary but not sufficient condition for forgiveness.
As trust is a necessary but not sufficient condition for love.
The question, always and with sometimes hard to accept answers, is
What, then, is sufficient?
What is needed if past injuries, past mistakes, past identities
are not to fester, repeat, freeze into unchangeable hardness of spirit?
Some say faith, some say grace, some say insight, some say hard work, some say luck.
I don’t know. I have no big answers, and only one small answer:
Sometimes I heal and scar, and the scar does not need protection,
because it is hard and tough, less vulnerable than the first skin.
But sometimes I heal and become new, with no scar, like a vulnerable newborn.
Then, though healed, I still need protection, perhaps more than ever.
And, that, I think, is the best of growing older.
