Beauty in the Broken by Kaitlyn

Beauty in the Broken by Kaitlyn - May 2018 Scholarship Essay

Stereotypes are built through the day to day situations. Even when you believe you are not judging others or creating false images in your head, you most likely are. This is not to say I am perfect and never judge anyone based off of first impression or statements that I have heard from peers. Time and time again I have found myself in a place where I have made false pretenses about people or places and when my opinions change, I am truly shocked at what I use to think of them. This reigned supreme when I went to the Dominican Republic on a mission trip this past year.
Exiting the plane into a third world country was not something new to me. But for some reason, exiting this plane was different. Once we were on the road to our host house for the next ten days, I began to take in the surroundings. All around me were shacks and half-built buildings. It was so much louder than in the United States. Everyone seemed to be talking to each other and cars with speakers in them were blasting music as they drove down the street. Street vendors were selling machetes and tasers to cars stopped by crossing guards. My mind went back to the idea of beautiful and broken and I still could not see how beauty was found in a run-down community where it looks as though they were barely functioning as a society.
Days went by and I began to immerse myself in the community and really get a feel for what it would be like to live in the Dominican Republic. While doing small activities, I began to realize that this third world country was not as broken as I once thought it was. The society is nothing like the United States, but in its own way it works and everyone can get by. I found that just because something is not as extraordinary by itself does not mean that it does not have its own beauty within in. The way this society performs together is like millions of sand falling together to create their own beautiful beach. I realized that even though the community is not as put together as our community at home, it has its beauty where the brokenness lies.
However, my views shifted completely the second to last day. Everyone woke up at 4:30 a.m. to get on the bus for our three-hour drive to a little mountain village in Catoui. This village was a sight for sore eyes, to say the least; potholes the size of basketballs filled the unpaved streets as non-drinkable water ran down the side of the road in small dug out ditches. Pieces of plywood are placed over the ditch to create a pathway to small shacks that ran alongside the road. Tin often was the only thing covering the households where large families took shelter. This small village was the dictionary definition of a third world country, and for the first time in my life, I was living in it.
The moment when all my views took a complete turn was when I was sitting on the bus waiting to leave as the rain was too heavy for us to continue painting the school. I looked out to this small playground which was simply a few swings, a basketball hoop, and a few spare tires. If it were the United States, the kids would be fleeing back to their houses to seek shelter from the pouring rain, but as I looked out this window, I saw numerous kids running in the rain, laughing at the top of their lungs, as they pushed around these spare tires. It was as though the pouring rain had washed away all my clouded judgments of the idea of finding beauty in the brokenness. These children were so happy with something that would be considered trash in our community, but in this little village of Catoui, they treated these tires as a luxury. I saw right then and there just how beautiful this country was in all of the brokenness. In a village with so little, a village with so much brokenness, they found the beauty in life. True beauty where they can genuinely enjoy life without distractions that can deter them from living their life to the best of their ability.
While completely different than the life I live, they function beautifully as a society in their own broken way. Living life in a minimalistic way, there is no doubt in my mind that they live a happier life than those who are blessed with copious amounts of resources. It is shocking for me to look back at the beginning of the year and see how closed minded I was about how things could not hold something great in something that could be unfortunate. Now I find myself finding the beauty in the brokenness in all situations I find myself in, and it helps me get through hard times. As I find myself facing daily struggles, I reflect back to my trip to the Dominican and remember to find the beauty in the brokenness and look for the stained glass in everything I do.