To love, we must be willing
To be vulnerable
But being vulnerable
Means that we can be hurt.
It is no wonder that
Those of us who are born to love
Learn to package our love,
As a viable alternative
To walking around
With our hearts wide open.
But when we package our love
By subserving institutions, mastering jargon,
Losing ourselves in politics,
Identifying with humanitarian organizations,
The love we would offer
Tends to atrophy,
Waxes impersonal, cliche.
To escape this dilemma,
Let us understudy Lobster and Snake.
As lobsters grow they shed their shells,
They also consume their old shells
For the calcium so they can grow new shells.
We think of lobsters as armored
But their underbellies are exposed,
So they are not as tough as they appear.
Snake famously sheds its old skin
By slithering out of it.
When I was little
I was always finding snake skins
In old stone walls.
Once I held one up to the sun
(So beautiful!)
And noticed that there was even
A clear scale protecting snake's eyes!
So in a sense, shedding
Renews snake's vision.
Snake uses the stones of the wall
As an abrasive to help it shed its skin
But another thing the wall does
Is, it protects snake
While it is shedding.
We who are born to love,
Must find our own way
To shed our skins,
To allow ourselves to grow
As our hearts expand.
Hopefully, like lobster and snake
We will continue to grow outwardly
And inwardly.
But, ultimately, we have to figure out
How to make loving work for us,
Because it is what we do,
It is who we are,
It is our super power.
Luckily there are a lot of us.
Being loving shouldn't make us pushovers
Or targets for predators.
Let us (lovers of earth, life,nature, humanity, each other)
Emulate the likes of lobster and snake.
They have a lot to teach us
And, judging by the state of the world,
We have a lot to learn.
(Article changed on Nov 19, 2022 at 11:33 AM EST)
