Living is not easy, and living openly is both wondrous and dangerous. There are many concerns peculiar to human beings that prevent us from shedding what’s ceased to work, including fear, pride, nostalgia, a comfort in the familiar, and a want to please those we love. Often we give up our right to renewal to accommodate the anxiety of those around us.

The Melanesians of the New Hebrides contend that this is how we lost our immortality:

At first men never died, but cast their skins like snakes and crabs, and came out with youth renewed. (But) after a time a woman, growing old, went to a stream to change her skin; according to some, she was Ul-ta-marama, Change-Skin of the World. She threw off her old skin in the water, and observed that as it floated it caught on a stick. Then she went home, where she had left her child. But the child refused to recognize her, crying that its mother was an old woman, not like this young stranger. So to pacify the child she went after her cast skin and put it on. From that time humans ceased to cast their skins and died. [Sir James Frazer]

When we cease to shed what’s dead in us in order to soothe the fear of others, we remain partial. When we cease to surface our most sensitive skin simply to avoid conflict with others, we lose our access to the eternal. When we assume truths we’ve already discarded just to placate the ignorance of others, we remain prisoners of that terrible knowledge.

We start out so innocent and fresh, knowing nothing of pain or breaking. We arrive with unblocked energy, all aglow. We begin as if washed in a golden bath, as if each soul is dropped in its body like water in a mouth, and then we embark, crystalline and barely ready. The Twi of West Africa believe it is the God named Nyame who bathes all souls before they are born.

But, whatever the name, we’re born with a light that constantly looks for ways to shine forth, each of us the courier of an energy that wants only to join with its original ocean. And this energy can lead us to the wonder of feeling, if we don’t shut it down or wall it in. Perhaps this is why, after all my own trials of breaking, after all my awkward attempts at shedding, after all my inevitable roundings from erosion, after all my own suffering, I feel that light is ultimately my home. Despite the terrible knowledge, I feel an inexplicable safety in a moment’s solitude washed clean by unexpected light.