What is the pattern here?

So much of what we see is colored by who we are and what tapes are currently playing on our mind radios. I took this picture a few days ago, on my morning walk. I struggled with it at the time I took it, and I struggle with it still.

I love the colors, and loved the perfect radiance of the leaves, the way they flare out from the center, the way the light seems to create concentric circles on the upper leaf, the bold flare of those outstretched fingers...

But what I find it hard to love is the brokenness of the fronds that thrust up from the center -- and I think that's very telling; painfully indicative of my own perspectives at the moment.

Back last summer I spent some time reading Byron Brown's book, Soul Without Shame, and now I'm reading it again, more slowly, for my spirituality class. And this week's assignment has been to notice the judgments we make of ourselves.

... which means I can't help noticing the broken imperfect parts of me, the parts deep at the center that don't have the grace and flow of the rest of my more acceptable bits.  So when I look at this image, that center bit -- the pushiness of it, the torn and tattered edges of it, the lack of symmetry -- becomes a symbol of all that I judge in myself (and find wanting).

So here's the question:  what exactly IS that piece, and how did it come to look that way?  Is it something that was randomly chopped off because it stuck out?  Or is it something trying to be born, a new leaf (and if so, why are its edges already brown?)  I keep thinking that if I could understand the growth pattern of this plant, figure out what role that center thrust plays, I might better understand my own broken and imperfect bits.

Because right now they're sitting front and center, and making it difficult to appreciate the whole picture...