Shaving Sand

I’m reminded of an ancient and perhaps not so well-known story of a woman casting her old skin into a river. She notices that it catches on a branch downstream.

No matter, she is young again.

When she arrives home, her child does not recognize her and wails inconsolably. She returns to the snag in the stream and slips into her skin of old, the forever of her life.

One story of how and why the Melanesians of the New Hebrides let immortality float.

The I, the physical self, is one moment, yet whatever animates all life does not shed its skin or does it?

The blade of grass gone yellow, the storm who winds itself calm, the wave that shaves the sand. All being spent only to return.

Time and again, not as once lived but each–human, grass, storm, or water–an opening night unto itself forever.

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot “Little Gidding.”

Aim for Even posts offer equanimity a dose at a time. No day or dose is ever the same, even if the aim is. You may read about the origins of Aim for Even here or on this site’s About page.