Battle scars

One acquires these over the course of a life.

For me, there's joint pain and a low back injury from an early athletic career, scars from abdominal surgery, and some hearing loss in my right ear from an infection. And the emotional ones.

All well managed, I believe. Injury comes with the territory, but one should still treat or manage whenever possible.

Even better, one should prevent when possible, without significant loss of connection or opportunity.

Some people have a lot of battle scars, some have few.

Some don't make it through.

There's nothing abnormal about experiencing grief related to all of this. But it needn't disqualify a person from experiencing joy.

The last thing we should expect is to remain pristine.