http://soundcloud.com/user575160/scar-tissue-lyrics

“Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.” – Henry Rollins

There are a great many ways for one to be scarred: there’s physical scars, emotional scars, other psychological scars that can be built up over a lifetime. Cuts and burns, that’s what they are. And we can let them heal, or we can pick at the scabs so that they never heal. I know people who are just messes of scabs and they are victims of those wounds, self-chained to the pain. But even when we heal it can be hard to move on.

What qualifies as “strength” in that quote, rather than an inability to move on? When a general mistrust of others, having developed over time, becomes a social impediment… that’s not strength because we thrive on community as a species. Detaching from the community is supposed to be a huge disadvantage, right?

I think the real strength lies in being able to face down the person one has become, to accept the things about themselves that they don’t like, to change what doesn’t work if they can and to work on becoming a more complete and healthy person by leaving those scars alone and letting them heal over. But can we ever truly “move on”? I don’t know. We certainly can’t forget what makes us who we are; we have to take that baggage with us wherever we go, don’t we?