Crackpots, Crooked Tops and Broken Pots

Crackpots, Crooked Tops and Broken Pots

Okay, this one is a stretch, as I’m winging it as I go.

I was speaking to a therapist colleague of mine a couple days ago (Dae Sheridan) when she used the term “crooked pots and crooked tops” in regards to how we are attracted to each other in spite of our “crookedness.”

My understanding of this crookedness means all of our shortcomings, eccentricities, baggage, brokenness, woundedness and differences.

So I decided to put my own extra spin (sorta, I think) on this. Hang on…

A crackpot is considered, by online definition, to be “an eccentric or foolish person.” In other words, someone who is unconventional and maybe a little strange or weird.

If you think about “crooked tops and broken pots” try to get a picture of a pan (the pot) you’d use to cook in and its lid (the top).

Now imagine that the pot is broken, like maybe a split partway down the side, but still usable. Then imagine that top is crooked, and broken as well, and it won’t fit correctly on the pot.

Now imagine trying to cook using this combination of the broken pot and crooked top.

“Yikes!” you might scream.

But upon further review, you realize that you can use them, but just not to their full “normal” capacity.

Now imagine a “crackpot” is cooking with the broken pot and its crooked top. Sounds like a recipe (no pun meant) for disaster?

Actually, the crackpot might just be the ideal person, because of their strange, different and unusual ways of doing things.

It might just be “perfect harmony.”

So what does this all mean?

It means, in my ever so strange and crooked way, with my ever so unusual crackpot perspective, and my ever so wounded and broken history, I can see how this would work in a relationship

It starts with this premise: We all have “stuff” and our stuff is the unhealed baggage we drag with us into relationships. Many times, from my experience in working with couples, the baggage ends up being flung at each other. This is in unconscious and unaware fits of activated unhealed wounds from the past.

Get all that? Might want to read it again, and be reminded that this is my premise, so it’s not the way, the truth or the light.

However, if both people in the relationship are aware that they both have some crackpot-like behaviors and some broken top-like thinking and perceiving, and some cracked pot-like reactivity, then they can figure out a way to make the relationship work.

BUT, it all starts with awareness. If they, and that means both of them, are not aware, or are unwilling to be aware of own their own stuff, then the likelihood of harmony is slim to say the least.

And this same dynamic plays out at work and pretty much anywhere there are people interacting with each other.

Imagine that we each had a little bit more awareness of our crackpottedness, crooked toppedness and broken pottedness of others AND ourselves; then we’d all have the chance to be less judgmental, critical and harsh on each other.

Tall order since it is SO much easier to be judgmental, critical and harsh; after all, our eyes (both of them) do look outward (at others) and not inward (at ourselves).

Maybe this could all begin by having some elementary crackpot, broken top and crooked top sensitivity training.

I know, there I go again, being a crackpot.

Oh well, what can I say, I come from a family of broken pots and crooked tops.

What would you expect?

Hopefully this makes sense and you got both a chuckle and some insight out of it.

Marry YourSelf First! …start today.