Today I received a succinct metaphor as a gift. Imagine a crab that, for some reason, hated its claw. Like, one creature has a fast fin, another has flexible tentacles, and the third is quite lucky - he has a multifunctional arm. But here, you see, a trivial claw, that’s the trouble. If someone had offered to trade, I would have traded with him without looking. And now I have to live with this ugliness, to suffer and endure.
Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Evolution didn’t punish the crab with a claw, but created the most valuable tool especially for it. Some species even have claws of different sizes. The smaller one is for cutting food and the bigger one is for smashing and breaking. Considering that the earliest fossils of this group date to the Jurassic period, that is 200-145 million years ago, it is unlikely that claws are a boon or a mistake of nature. On the contrary, the grasping organ was designed this way and no other. And if the particular crab in our fictional example does not yet understand this meaning, then the question should be put to its thinking, not to the claw at all.
Now look around you to see how many people deny, struggle, try in vain to change, and become depressed over aspects of their personality, mind, or body that they think are harmful and therefore unnecessary. But often the problem is simply a mismatch between reality and the desired image of oneself. For some reason, I, a descendant of a crab, imagined myself to be Dumbo the octopus, the gray heron, or the sea devil, and thus doomed myself to suffer in the trap of my own mind.
Now we understand why the net of the imagination is so difficult to untangle–the one who has woven it must unravel it. But at the same time it’s clear why the things that have been stealing energy, hindering creativity, and dragging us down for decades can disappear instantly. All solutions are not outside, but inside us.
Sincerely yours,
-Alexander
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