Why Falling-Apart.net?

In February 2006, John Wong suffered a series of strokes while chopping wood on a frigid day. Headache, fatigue, and unsteady gait became a continual experience for him as a result. In February 2007, his long-time friend Bob David lost his father after seven months of tending to him daily.

That summer, both men participated in another friend's brainstorming session over a web site project to publish academic and political writings. As the session wound down, John, standing with cane in hand, commented on the other friend’s precarious state of health and remarked in jest, "Look at us, we should be doing a web site about falling apart!"

The phrase “falling apart” hung in the air with a resonance we immediately recognized would be felt by most anyone who had lived enough years to experience the deeply challenging personal trials that life invariably presents.

The idea for Falling-Apart.net …and Picking Up the Pieces was born. Its purpose became clear: As people shared truthfully and objectively about their experience, the general store of wisdom would be broadened; readers might make connections that would render greater understanding and compassion and offer hope, insight, encouragement, inspiration, and even humorous relief.

John H. Wong, Ph.D.

When I first read Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece Things Fall Apart in 1973, I sympathized with the tragic destruction of African Ibo culture by colonization, but I did not empathize with the main character Okonkwo and his fear, anger, and bitterness in dealing with his changing life. As a young college student then, I felt quite the opposite; I was trying to find a role for myself to do good in a world in rapid transition.

In 2007, I read that novel again in preparation for launching this on-line magazine. My perspective toward the book has remained the same, but in 34 years I have matured in my thinking about the process of change. I now view the world through the paradigm that things fall apart and we pick up the pieces, through a process of healing and renewal. For many people, particularly those who are less fortunate, their worldview in the 21st Century is that many things are falling apart for them, their families, and their world.

Okonkwo commits suicide at the end of the book. I hope that Falling-Apart.net ...and Picking Up the Pieces can play a modest role in helping readers find the courage, strength, and resiliency they need to face life’s inevitable obstacles—in Chinua Achebe’s words, “to fly without perching on a twig.”

Bob David

I’m a great believer in faith and hope.

I have faith that, no matter how devastating or bleak the inner or outer landscape may appear, there is available to us at every moment an intelligence and wisdom beyond our immediate understanding and control that is capable of showing us a brighter picture and leading us to a saner, happier place.

I have hope that, no matter how tightly outside pressures and our mental and emotional structures grip and mold what may become for us limited and disheartened perspectives, this intelligence and wisdom will find the right opening at the right time to break through into our awareness.

Sometimes that opening comes in the willingness to listen to others; sometimes that intelligence and wisdom is sparked by the words and experience we listen to.

I don’t believe we can ever really determine where another person’s answers lie. My hope is that Falling-Apart.net ...and Picking Up the Pieces will provide a forum where people will share meaningful experience, and where readers, with or without their own questions or struggles, will come, not to seek direct advice or suggestions, but to listen in, not feel alone, and maybe discover for themselves their own sources of inspiration.