Precious, fragile

This week's topic was vaguely set by yours truly as things that are both Precious and Fragile. It was actually inspired in part by a new song from an old group....Precious by Depeche Mode. I first heard it on a one of my favorite guilty pleasures...i mean...shows (Smallville) a few weeks ago. The song was good and got me thinking about what I hold dear that is fragile.

Somethings in this world are fragile, plain and simple. They break easily. Many of these things are also precious. And many of these things are precious in part because they are "fragile" per se. Delicate heirloom quality china stowed away in padded pacakging for instance ... a rookie card of some hall of famer delicately preserved in plastic. Precious and fragile things need special handling.

The same can be said of less concrete things we hold precious and dear to us. Sometimes they are fragile too. For instance, sometimes we put people up on a pedestal. We hold them so highly that they can even exemplify the quality that we admired about them in the first place (or more likley just a kind of person). Its almost like we hold these people as ideals. And because these are ideals...the thing that is fragile is the perfection and exemplification of these ideals. If it wasn't so easy to ruin this perfection, then we might not hold the ideal (or kind of person) so highly. Parallels anyone? Anyway, just one incident straying from this can shatter that precious conception of this person and perhaps to a lesser or greater extent our beleif in that achievable ideal in the first place.

We find these people in all areas of our life. Sometimes we don't even know we feel this way about these people until something does happen...and they most surely don't usually know we put them on a pedestal. The fact is we do though. Who knows? You may be just that person for someone else. This should give us extra motivation to have the courage of our own convictions and be a good example for others. You never know who is putting you up there. Be yourself and stand firm for those things you know are good things about yourself. You can be a personal hero without even knowing it.