Malleability

I take a piece of play dough, that soft smelly stuff kids play with, and scrunch it in my hand. Every little line shows up. It is like Nightmare On Elm Street meets Oil of Olay. Lines, wrinkles, nails, gouges, they're all here. The play dough is new and soft, easily imprinted upon.

Later on, after being exposed to the world, after being left on the table and eroded by the air, it becomes much more difficult to make some of those marks. What was hugely noticeable before, barely shows now. Less pliable and soft, the play dough has become hardened to the world's ways.

I am like that play dough. Today I am tough. You can do an awful lot to me before I will give up, or change my mind about myself. In fact, that is not always a good thing. There are things I would like to change about me, that just seem so ingrained I sometimes despair of every ridding myself of them.

I wasn't always this way, though. That's how I got some of these quirky little hang ups. It's why my music is never good enough, my body never perfect enough, my stories never brilliant enough. As a soft little ball of malleable soul, someone reached out and inscribed these things in me. It made me afraid that I was not enough and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy if one is not careful.

It doesn't have to. It can bring out other characteristics, like courage. It takes all my courage to allow anyone to read my new book, or hear me play the piano, or even allow someone to look at my not so perfect picture. Sad that things as simple as this become such a big deal. Life is short, but I hope it is long enough for me to get past a few of these things before I step through the veil. I doubt there's much use for them over there.