Oyster

The world is your oyster.

I always interpreted that differently to most people, I suppose. I thought when you say such a thing, the pearl stood for the world, and to explore it, one simply had to roll around the oyster's mouth (so to speak).

As I grew older, this view changed. I thought about how oysters try so hard not to be irritated by that little piece of grit, and that if we don't be irritated by the little things, good things will come as pearls of wisdom.

Again, my view changed. I see that just like an oyster, we try to hide the little bit of grit that irritates us so, by building false layers over it. Really, we're all pearls. Nothing but dirty grit in a falsified shell brought on from those around us.
In no way is this meant to be insulting, no! In fact, its quite the opposite. We build those layers to protect ourselves, as the oyster, from being further irritated by the dirt. The layers are protective, allowing us to roll over and around the world -the oyster's mouth- without harming or disturbing it.

Then again...think again.

Oysters being entire worlds? Perhaps not so. Perhaps the oyster is merely a womb, containing us, sheathing us in layers to protect the fragile entity we begin as. And hence, we grow. We grow, and grow...

Until our worlds are caught, wrenched open, and we're exposed to the light. The harsh reality, which we want to run from. Find something to run to, or indeed, just to run. Run from the simple fact that our lives, so sheltered, were never so. We were cultivated to be exposed.

Just cultivated to be exposed. And now we face that exposure every day of our lives...The constant scrutiny, the knowledge we seek to fit in with the crowd, the waking-up-in-a-cold-sweat world that we live in. We were made to be scrutinised, selected and then separated. Just like what our social rituals do. It doesn't matter if we come from the same oyster...it doesn't matter that our history is the same. What matters is what happens after. What we make of ourselves. Our pearl to be the biggest, the best, the most beautiful...

We're all pearls in this little oyster, we are...

And our imperfections are exactly what make us perfect.