If you’ve ever had sand in your shorts you know how irritating it can be. Probably where its name sake drink originated. You need a Sand in Your Shorts when you have “sand in your shorts”. The first thing I want to do is get the sand out of my shorts. Kelly Clarkson’s song “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger’ is playing as I spin this morning, my sweat glistening translucently as the lyrics push me forward, the oyster flashed in my mind.
Oysters on the Half Shell, I was beginning to feel faint from hunger, then the idea that we are more similar to the oyster than most people think. It has a stomach, heart, intestines, abductor muscle, and a mouth. How nice I thought to be an oyster right now, I probably would not have to do this much cardio. As my rambling thoughts spun out of control along with my legs, I contemplated the commonly held belief that sand in an oyster becomes a pearl. Boy I wish I was on the beach in Playa right now shaking sand out of my shorts, magical afternoon, stunning nature, oysters on the Half Shell again. Oh yeah, back to the oyster. As it turns out a pearl forms when an “irritant” becomes trapped inside. It’s kind of like the oyster getting a splinter. The oyster’s natural reaction is to cover up the irritant to protect itself. Kind of like how I want to cover up the pain I’m feeling on this spin bike right now. Here’s where the oyster and most people part company.
The beautiful role model oyster, instead of dwelling on this irritant or even trying to expel it from its life, layers the same material it uses to build it’s shell in such a magnificent way that the ultimate outcome is Mother of Pearl. Is the Pearl always this perfectly round specimen of translucent white beauty? No. Of course not. They often come in uneven shapes, a variety of colors, white, black, gray, red blue, and green, just like our lives.
As I look back on my life and the moments of irritation I realize they are blessedly there to build the Mother of Pearl of my heart, my soul and my body. Without those moments of heartache, angst, pain, sweat, tears, loss, hate, rejection, injury and all that I sometimes wished had killed me I would never had juxtapositioned them against the intense love, peace, pleasure, rest, abundance, inclusion, tolerance, wealth and health which has showered my life. In other words, I would never have known the pearls.
To say we are not molded and motivated by pain is to say that this beautiful way shower planet does not have a clue. The examples abound of beautiful creation everywhere you look. A butterfly’s metamorphism, a chicken hatching from an egg, a tree in the driest place on earth evolving to become draught resistant.
The irritants of our lives can show up as a reflection of a trait we most dislike about ourselves in another person or the loss of a loved one. It can manifest as a horrific experience in life or as a loss of physical stuff. The oyster would be hard pressed to use its building blocks of shell making if it were compromised by stress, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cholesterol, arthritis or other ailments.
When I have Sand In My Shorts or irritants in my life, I can only layer the building blocks of my life into Mother of Pearl by practicing the pearls I have created as I have sailed through this life. My wellness is predicated on not only the physical fitness, but the intangibles of intense love, pleasure, rest, self-caring health and showing myself with celebration as I embrace the irritants and turn them into something translucent and spectacular.
What color and shape are your pearls? Find the irritant in your life today and create another.