Breaking things — the good, the bad, and the ugly

In 1947, USAF Capt. Charles “Chuck” Yeager broke the sound barrier, and he did it with two broken ribs. Yeager and his wife, Glennis, had gone horseback riding, his horse threw him and he broke two ribs. Yeager had his ribs taped up by a civilian doctor so the Air Force wouldn’t find out. Yeager gets extra points for breaking his ribs at the same time he broke the sound barrier. A B-29 dropped “Glamorous Glennis (named for his wife) from its bomb bay at 25,000 feet, the rocket ignited and reached the speed of sound, Mach 1, at 760 miles per hour, which caused a big “boom.” Yeager didn’t hear the big boom because the pressure waves go around the plane, like the wake of a ship, and the boom unrolls behind it.

Yeager was rewarded for breaking the sound barrier, but most people get punished for breaking things. For instance, if you break your phone, it can also break your bank. Everyone knows that if you break a mirror, you will have seven years of bad luck. Breaking a bad habit is difficult because the brain doesn’t distinguish between whether a habit is good or bad, so by the time you realize that smoking is a bad habit that leads to lung cancer, heart disease, and COPD, you’re hooked. It can take up to 60 days to break a bad habit and you may need the help of a medical doctor, the intervention of friends, and a life-style change. Obviously, when someone says “stop smoking” they really mean “break a leg,” because it is less painful to heal a broken bone than to try to break a bad habit.

A promise is something you can break but not hold. People who break promises have good intentions. They promise to be at little Susie’s soccer game or Johnny’s piano recital, but then, at the last minute, they have to work, or the car broke down (cars are always “breaking” down). People will make promises they can’t keep because they want to tell you something you want to hear and “no” is such an abrupt negative response.

When two people get married, they have every intention of keeping their promise to love each other “til death do us part.“ No-one should stay in a marriage that is abusive or causes unhappiness, and since 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, maybe it is time to re-write the wedding vows to promise to love each other “til we don’t.”

You can heal from a broken bone and resolve a broken promise, but, as Elton John sang, “don’t go breaking my heart.” Being in love is delightful. It’s exquisite, intense, a time of magic and wonder, but when it’s over, it’s brutal. There are tears, anger, frustration, and more tears – followed by gallons of ice cream.

There are some things that are good to break. Women enjoy breaking the glass ceiling, an invisible barrier that prevents women from advancing to higher positions of responsibility. However, it can be more difficult to break an awkward silence, that uncomfortably long pause in conversation that makes you wish you could hide behind the glass ceiling.

Athletes are famous for breaking records. Who can run the fastest? Get the most home runs? Score the most touchdowns? Athletes like to break records because they make history, and by making history, they become famous, and then they can negotiate a contract for more money — and more money is always “breaking news.”