A Shell Left Behind

While keeping my son’s puppy, Deco, he brought a “gift” upon the front porch. It was a turtle’s shell mostly decomposed having now been left to the ants to finish its demise and decomposition. And yet, what it left behind is so beautiful; its shell, its shield against the stronger forces of nature. With lovely patterns and a myriad of striae within each pattern, it is a truly a work of art.

What will be left behind of me to show that I was on this earth? Obviously, no corporeal work of art, but hopefully, I can leave behind for those who knew me a tapestry of memories woven from threads of the joy and love for life that I have cultivated in my recent years, as only one among many of life’s beautiful forms I hold so dear; the trees and plants, the insects including the nest of wasps on my front porch I call “my friends”, the birds that grace the view from my window daily, the deer and coyotes, the raccoons and rabbits. Finally, I welcome the thread towards my fellow human beings whom I am coming to appreciate after a long stretch of having an attitude bordering contempt.

Only until one has esteem and love of self can one appreciate the humanity in others. I am now open and willing to accept my humanity with all its vulnerabilities, its frailties, but also its possibilities and strengths. And now, as in a looking glass, I can see and cherish that same humanity in others. When I let go of my ego and open my essential self to love them, I am able to receive love in return.

So the snobbish bitch persona that I so often wore as a shield to protect my vulnerable inner self from my fellow humankind, unlike the turtle’s shell, I cast off as a work of my own making of ego. Now I hope to create and leave a legacy of moments open and exposed to the fullness of life and all the joy, contentment and ecstasy that goes along with being in tune with the breath of life and being that runs through the essence of me; that part remaining when my outer shell dies.