A young man goes searching for answers and winds up at the top of a tall, tall mountain where an old, old man will respond to three questions. He asks the wise man,
What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart?
How can a man like me remain in the light?
If life is really as short as they say, then why is the night so long?
The old man answers:
See I once was a young fool like you, afraid to do the things that I knew I had to do. So I played an escapade just like you. I played an escapade just like you.
He explains that he too had once sailed a wild, wild sea and climbed a tall, tall mountain where he found an old, old man and asked the same three questions. And that old man proceeded to give the same answer he was giving now. When he was a young fool...
One perceives that the same quest had been going on since there were wild seas for young men to sail on and tall mountains for old men to meditate on.
The beauty of the song is that it actually contains an answer, it actually shows the way forward to the bewildered and heartsick youth. The answer is in the old man's prologue to his tale. He explains that what spawned his quest was the fact that he was afraid to do the things that he knew he had to do. Rather than doing his duty, he "played an escapade". That is, he went on a wild and foolish adventure that was - truth be told - nothing more than an escape from the moral obligations that stared him in the face. (The word escapade comes from the word "escape".)
When you flee duty, you'll try to justify your flight as "a search for answers" or a lofty quest to "discover yourself and your purpose." But that is just a cruel joke you're playing on yourself. Small wonder you wind up confused and heartbroken. Instead, do the things that you know you are supposed to do - even if they are troublesome and inconvenient or require the kind of courage that you just don't feel you have. Do what you ought. Repent of your sin. Embrace goodness. Do the simple thing that is right in front of you that you have been putting off. In so doing, you will find that you have already arrived at the goal of the quest you thought you needed to go on. The questions that you had will either be answered or will lose their relevance. Joy and wisdom lie in the path of the one who simply puts down one obedient foot after another.
I myself know very well what to do with the pieces of a broken heart. My own heart has been mashed to bits more than once - more than twice, now that I think about it. I am the last person in the world to say that I have succeeded in re-assembling those broken bits through the shockingly simple expedient of doing the things that I knew I had to do. But I know that is where the answer lies. It is all of a piece with what my Lord Jesus Christ taught when he said, "Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own" (John 7:17). Jesus affirmed that the choice to do God's will would precede the assurance that his own teachings were anything more than the platitudes of an itinerant Jewish carpenter. Do good, and you will know.
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