There is this set of ourselves which we can be when we are still young, good and loving. As we grow old there are layers added to this soft heart of ours. Imagine tiny stones, a whole lot of algae and all of it dried up. A sort of green gemstone, rough one that shows how the heart transformed from being soft delicate to accumulating everything over time into this wholly new, too hard to penetrate, too difficult to shrug off, seemingly hardened and stronger yet brittle self.

So arduous to remove all those tiny bits of shells and stones, however hard you try to shed these experiences, they will stay. And tougher you might pretend to be but it would all transform you into someone more fragile. It would be this ache with these little sharp edges, piercing you each time with every memory relieved. Too uncomfortable it could be to just look at it and realise what it has become, what we have become with so much dirt settling there and transforming into a scary little gem stone cover all over. 

And you try to be there, for your heart, to take care, to be nice but it won’t break. However hard you want that shell to be gone, maybe even a little less deep somewhere, it won’t, it won’t just wear away. It will stay there, mocking you, hiding that true self of yours somewhere behind all these layers. You won’t be able to see the real you. 

You can try to be harsh, maybe even try somehow to scrub it all off, across a sharp clear slate. It might help but each time you would slice, it will take a little bit of the old you hidden below the surface along with it. But at least, you could now recognise yourself right from this momentary sight? At Least you could see the self, the better self you loved before all the conditioning life made. Slowly you can hope for it to erode over the years, steadily hopefully, if no corrosions are there, transforming you nearer to your own true self.

But maybe at the end of this abrasion there could be nothing left to propose the very existence of you in the first place. It might all just flow down meeting the scrapped off stones, dirt and shells, now maybe to become some other self, something or someone else, at sometime somewhere else!