Apples, Auditoriums, and Avoiding Our Bruises

On avoidance

“But if I pretend it isn’t there, won’t it go away?” asked bird.

If you pretend it isn’t there,” replied bear, “you will be the one who goes away.”

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📷: Parts + pieces of Evergreen, Daisy, and Am I Blue
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I eat an apple at lunch every day. There’s something about it that always makes me feel seven again; that feeling of opening the latches on my metal lunchbox, feet nervously dangling under the chair in the school auditorium where we all ate, excited to see what mom had carefully layered inside.

Ants on a log. Noodle soup in a thermos. Carrot sticks and apple wedges. And, if I was lucky, a cookie or two.

The other day, I reached into my frig to pull out an apple. The first one I grabbed was bruised, so I grabbed another.

“I don’t want to deal with that today,” I thought to myself, semi-unconsciously.

The next day, I did the same thing, moving that bruised apple to the back.

“I don’t have time for that today,” as I pictured having to cut out the soft spots.

7 days. 7 apples. And every time, I moved that bruised apple to the back, bumping it up against the side of the drawer again and again.

The internal message I was telling myself was something like: “I just want a *good* apple today.”

Good as in easy, no work, status quo, unblemished, asking nothing extra of me.

How many times in life do we move that bruised apple to the back of our own frig?

“I just want it to be easy.”

How often do we add to our own bruising by holding tightly to our picture of how things are “supposed” to be rather than dealing with what actually is?

And how frequently do we realize that, after we’ve done the work of inspecting our bruises, the good stuff always lies under those soft spots?

The irony is that my bruised apple has already done this work, has already bumped up against the world and responded in real time – no avoiding, no pushing down the hard stuff.

Because that bruise – the one we’re avoiding – is a result of enzymes flooding over the area of impact, breaking down damaged cells, protecting the apple from intruders like bacteria.

What bruise can you “flood with enzymes” of care, compassion, intentionality, and focus today?