Ball of Clay

Ball of Clay

We come into this world as unmolded clay: raw, unformed, impressionable, yet whole and complete. As we encounter the formative elements on our journey, we take impressions. Some are just superficial and soon reshaped by the next experience. Some are deep and lasting; cauterized by trauma, emotion, or repetition. These stay with us. 

If we are clay then our lives, this existence, the experiences and environments we move through, is also a fluid medium, taking shape from us as we take our shape from it. Those lasting, deep grooves and mounds can force our environment to repeat the shapes that created them in the first place. 

Until there comes another event: life-altering in the same way a torrential rain will soften the long-worn ruts in a hard-baked dirt road to be re-worked and re-worn into new paths. But if you are familiar with dirt road ruts, you know that often even the most torrential rain only slicks the surface. It may alter the ruts and ridges, but it rarely makes them smooth.

They can, however, be softened by steady soft rain in the form of patient self-study. 

The point is they can be changed, as all things change. That is the nature of existence. That is the defining factor of life in a philosophical and scientific sense. Everything is in process, slow or fast, mercurial or glacial is a matter of perception. Biochemically, we change with every breath. We are fluid. Our nature is to adapt and to our dying breath, we are always capable of change.