Broken Things, and the Simplicity Beyond Complexity
This morning began quietly, earlier than expected. I had gone to bed around six the previous evening, exhausted, something I once resisted doing. In the past I would push myself to stay awake longer, fearing that an early sleep would wake me too early. But instead of fighting it, I simply allowed the rest to come. Sure enough, I woke up around 3:30 in the morning and began the day in solitude.
There was a calm, almost sacred feeling in the quiet. I made coffee, began organizing my medications for the week, and listened to a video sent to me by a friend. The speaker was Napoleon Hill, a man whose voice sounded ancient even in the recording. I had never really explored his work before. My usual habit when encountering a new speaker is to investigate their roots and influences, to see what tradition they stand within. Often that reveals much about the ideas being shared.
Hill spoke about adversity as preparation. He framed difficulty not as the end of something but as a refining process. Though he did not cite Scripture directly, much of what he said echoed biblical patterns that are deeply familiar to me.
Joseph endured prison before leadership.
Moses spent years in the desert before deliverance.
David lived in caves before the crown.
Preparation often looks like hardship when you are inside it.
That theme connected deeply with the reflections already forming in my mind.
The Image of the Train
Carl Jung once used an image that stayed with me. In paraphrase, he spoke of older people reaching a stage of life where they begin to resist the inevitable end. It is like a man digging his heels into the ground while standing at the edge of a precipice, trying to stop himself from being pushed over. Another way to picture it is a train speeding toward the end of the tracks. As the end approaches, a person might spend all their energy trying to get off the train.
The danger in that mindset is that one stops living.
The effort to avoid the end consumes the life that remains.
This morning, however, I noticed something different in myself. I was not clinging to the edge. I was simply moving through the day—organizing small things, preparing to visit my brothers, enjoying the quiet hours before the world woke.
There was no rush.
A Plan for the Day
I was planning to spend time with my brothers Glenn and Andrew. For a moment I considered driving them to a restaurant in North Vancouver. It would involve navigating traffic in downtown Vancouver with my Ram 1500 pickup truck, dropping one brother off afterward, then racing home in time to pick up my son from work.
But another image came to me, one that felt more peaceful.
Instead of taking them out for a meal, what if we went to Andrew’s home?
What if Glenn and I helped tidy the place, prepared a meal in his kitchen, and sat together around his table?
The thought filled me with what I can only describe as transcendent joy.
Not because it was grand or impressive, but because it felt real.
I imagined Andrew waking the next morning and seeing his own home differently. The table where we sat. The couch where we talked. The kitchen where we cooked together. Instead of a lonely space, it would become a place where life had happened.
Glenn’s Story
My brother Glenn once came very close to losing everything.
In 2019 his world collapsed—his marriage, his career, his home, everything that once defined his life. He ended up in a hospital room, almost catatonic, whispering into the darkness. He had been hollowed out.
Eventually the hospital discharged him. Perhaps they decided there were others who needed the room more. It felt like an eagle pushing a chick from the nest before it was ready to fly.
But Glenn did not fall alone.
God placed people in his path. I was one of them.
That history changed how I see the relationship between Glenn and me. When we reach toward Andrew now, it is not the strong rescuing the weak. It is more like wounded soldiers on a battlefield who realize another brother is still alive and in need of help.
One of them places pressure on the wound. Another calls for assistance. They do what they can with the strength they have left.
The Battlefield Image
The image that keeps returning is that of three men on a battlefield who refuse to leave one another behind.
Each of us has been wounded in our own way. Each of us has known seasons where life seemed finished. Yet we remain standing.
In that sense the mission is not heroic. It is simply loyalty.
Reaching out to a brother and saying, “Hold this here. Apply pressure. We’re going to get through this.”
My Father and Glenn
There is another layer to Glenn’s story that reaches further back.
When I was ten years old and Glenn was fifteen, my father told Glenn to leave. He was effectively cast out. Glenn did not fight back. He had already reached the end of himself.
For years Glenn tried to prove our father wrong.
He once said something that captured the pain of that struggle: the desire to stand at our father’s grave and say, “Look what I became. I proved you wrong.”
Our father mocked Glenn’s ambition and strength. Instead of celebrating that resilience, he rejected it. It was a wound that shaped Glenn’s life for decades.
Yet the story did not end there.
A Lesson from My Daughter
My daughter Cherish once told me something simple but profound:
“Be careful of your own theatre.”
Her point was that when we rehearse how events are supposed to unfold, we often end up hurting ourselves when reality refuses to follow the script.
That wisdom connects to a quote often attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes and repeated by M. Scott Peck:
“I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
Life becomes complicated. Relationships fracture. Expectations collapse.
But if we pass through that complexity honestly, we sometimes arrive at a deeper simplicity.
Clean the house.
Cook the meal.
Sit at the table together.
The Greyhound Bus
Another image emerged while reflecting this morning.
Three older men stepping off a Greyhound bus into the prairie towns of Winkler or Morden. They are searching for their brother John. They are not even sure whether he is alive or buried somewhere nearby.
The scene unfolds quietly.
They stretch their legs after the long ride.
They look around the town.
They find a coffee shop.
Andrew walks to a nearby stand and buys a newspaper. He fumbles for coins and begins scanning the obituaries.
Maybe their brother’s name is there. Maybe not.
If they find nothing, they might place an advertisement in the local paper:
“Does anyone know where our brother is? Meet us at Barney’s Grill.”
It is not dramatic. It is ordinary.
But that ordinariness carries something powerful: the refusal to abandon family.
Scott the Bus Manager
In my working life I drive a school bus for Southpointe Academy. It is part of what I call my semi-retirement.
The transportation division is run by a man named Scott. He is younger than me, perhaps in his mid-forties, but he is someone I respect deeply.
Scott has a hobby of restoring classic muscle cars. He finds them abandoned in backyards and scrap heaps, vehicles that others have written off. With patience and care he rebuilds them until the engines purr again.
That same instinct appears in the way he runs his transportation department. Many of the drivers are retired veterans with decades of experience behind the wheel. Some have made mistakes in life. Some have endured hardships.
Scott sees value where others might only see worn-out parts.
In a sense, he restores people the same way he restores cars.
The Tablets of Stone
Later I thought of Deuteronomy chapter 10, where God tells Moses to carve two new stone tablets and bring them up the mountain along with a wooden chest.
The first tablets had been broken.
The second tablets were carved again and placed inside the ark.
The symbolism struck me.
Broken things are not always discarded. Sometimes they are rewritten, placed in a container, and carried forward with the people.
A Quiet Morning
While all these thoughts unfolded, I was doing something very ordinary: organizing my medication for the week.
Small pills spread across a napkin.
A weekly organizer waiting to be filled.
In the middle of that process I realized I had accidentally duplicated a dose of Jardiance. I stopped, reset everything, and started again carefully.
There was something symbolic in that small act as well.
Taking scattered pieces and rebuilding them with attention.
A Simple Conclusion
In the end, the theme running through the morning was simple.
Broken tablets rewritten.
Old engines restored.
Wounded brothers helping one another.
A quiet meal prepared in a humble kitchen.
Love does not always arrive with speeches.
Sometimes it looks like this:
“Let’s clean this place up.
Let’s make dinner.
Let’s sit down and eat together.”
Running Down Vimy 