Let go the chisel
Water finds a way through stone
As soon as you identify as something, people start telling you who you are and what you mean. They put you in a little box and leave you there.
–Chloe Cooper Jones, “Easy Beauty”
You chisel some words into stone for safety. I'll be your server, I am your father, I work in marketing. You fashion a handle for others, while you grapple for balance within. Then you protect that stone like it's a living being.
But it is not a living being. Stones do not grow. What if you were like water instead?
Water is anonymous but unmistakable. Ordinary but essential. Nearly limitless in form: river, cloud, glacier, mist. Water is the essence of all beasts including you.
Become what chisels cannot contain. All the disparate stories and their contradictions. Be cursive! Relinquish symmetry. Be less like granite and more like a cloud. Yes, a cloud. Formless and fluid and vast beyond comprehension.
Yes, it is uncomfortable to be formless. Water is a lousy shield. But what are you afraid of? Humans are all tributaries of the same river. With enough distance and time, all stories converge, in a torrent, becoming the familiar fuzz of a waterfall.
Soften your identity and others take notice. Your brothers and sisters start to loosen their grip on their precious stones. And then, weirdly, reality itself starts to bend; when you become flexible, the universe follows suit. Anything becomes possible.
You chisel some words into stone for safety, but it’s an illusion. Water always finds a way through stone.