I hope you'll never stay the same.
“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”
― Anais Nin
We are never really one thing. Even when we believe ourselves to be - there is a machinery of our sense of selves working beneath the surface to contradict that. It’s very human to wear some sort of layer that allows your “me”, to adapt to situations and people. Perhaps it is our own subconscious way for survival, but we were born to evolve and change. It is our birthright.
And so we wear different layers to appease our family, our friends, strangers, colleagues, social media, etc. Whatever it takes to “fit in”. We can’t be too wild, too deep, too shallow, too funny, too weird, too normal. Too warm? Too cold? Let’s adjust ourselves, to whatever they please so we can “belong”.
Yet belonging starts within, when we find our way home to all shades of ourselves.
We are plenty of skins; perhaps that the most perplexing yet mesmerizing part of being human. We are layers made to change as we grow, it is simply in our DNA. We can’t escape it.
And no matter what form we take on, the same bones and blood run within us. The hardest obstacle is getting out of our own way, for change to take its rightful place.
Water can dissolve itself, replenish itself, stay still, and move to wipe out anything in its way. But water is always water. It can never be utterly destroyed as it exists quietly, bravely shapeshifting with the elements around it to survive.