What Kind of Rup?

There are all kinds of ruptures in life, aren’t there? To name a few, there are disruptions and interruptions, and even a few eruptions. Most of these “rups” are bumps in the road we’d prefer to avoid. Many of us long for an uninterrupted stretch of time to read or write or reflect or sleep or take care of personal business, especially this time of year… but often that kind of time is hard to come by. Most of us yearn for a life free from disruption, but that’s just not possible no matter what the season. And for some, the unwelcome ruptures in relationships make time almost unbearable in every season. Life has its “rups” and sometimes they cause us to erupt!

Inconsistent internet service. Dropped cell phone calls. People talking on top of others talking. Children insisting on immediate attention. Power outages. Overdrawn bank accounts. Returned mail. Stumbling and tumbling in public. A sudden flat tire. Forgetting the phone charger on a trip. A stolen debit card. These and myriads of other “rups” can and do happen to us on an all-too-regular basis. When they pile up, we erupt under the stress of it all. Or when we are thin on emotional elasticity, we erupt as the tension causes us to snap. And if we mistakenly believe we can control everything in our lives and experience teaches us otherwise, we just erupt. A disruption can break us down in a heartbeat. An interruption can bring out the worst in us in a split second.

We now interrupt our regular blog-writing with a special announcement: not all “rups” are unpleasant. Chen Si patrols a bridge over the Yangtze River in China hoping to interrupt a person with suicidal plans. Dubbed the “Angel of Nanjing,” Si has spent over two decades disrupting death’s appeal for nearly 470 people who were struggling in the clutches of despair. He does it through conversation, wearing a red jacket embroidered with the words “Cherish Life Every Day,” the motto by which he lives. While Si has received international accolades for his mission, we all have opportunities to be equally and positively disruptive. We’ve got it in us. Think small. Simple. A word of encouragement. An empathetic embrace. Unsolicited praise. A spontaneously shared cup of coffee. A helping hand. There are scads of ways we humans are capable of interrupting the doldrums of others of our kind! Call them minor miracles. Dub them divine disruptions. Ride the “rups” of life and support others in theirs. Let's let the lava of love erupt from within us spreading all around us season in and season out!