When I sit down to write a record of a thought as it moves, I wonder if I can begin with a sentence as blunt as this. How else might I begin? The world has held itself together by sheding and sheding old skins, old seasons, old certainties.
After I write it, I notice it isn’t sheding but shedding. A small mistake, the kind you can correct with a tap. I could fix it, of course. But in life, do I ever get the chance to return and edit every error I’ve made? When I think of that, I feel like leaving the misspelling where it stands. a tiny, honest bruise on the page.
This urge to put down the mind without filtering it has a good sounding term. James Joyce mastered it. What is it? Memory stumbles, then finds its footing. “Stream of consciousness.” Fine.
Shedding is nothing new. I come back to it.
Is shedding an event? A law of nature? A philosophy? It depends on who is speaking, and where they’re standing when they speak. What do you think?
Wait. wait. who did I just ask? Another character? Or am I asking myself, the inner self? And even then, is there one of me, or two?
Alright. I come back.
Is shedding an event? A law of nature? A philosophy? It depends on who is speaking. What do I think?
I think the time is 5:26 a.m. A hot coffee would be kind. Should I make it? I bought a good machine. I like that about me: buying hope in stainless steel.
Today is Boxing Day. If I google “coffee near me,” the opening hours say, “Boxing Day. hours may differ.” That polite little phrase that means: don’t count on it. It’ll be closed. Still, let me try after an hour. Let me walk out and offer the day a chance to disappoint me properly.
Outside, it’s still dim. I’m afraid. Afraid of the dark. In one more year I’ll be forty-two, and still afraid of the dark. Pathetic.
Wait. wait. who did you just swear at? The dark has a quality of its own. A dignity. What is pride, really, in giving darkness the respect it deserves? And it isn’t only that, my imagination runs loose. In light, everything is decided; there’s no space to place anything new. In darkness, you can place anything you want.
Bullshit. Imagination, my foot. Bloody overthinker.
Fine. I return.
Is shedding an event? A law of nature? A philosophy? It depends on who is speaking. What do I think?
Shedding is nothing new. This isn’t a philosophical inquiry, nor a work of invention. Take it as a note, or a delirious mutter, about what I have shed, what I have been forced to shed, what I still want to shed, and what I gained and lost in the leaving behind.
Even in these first paragraphs I can see it: this is how the mind breeds a hundred thoughts each day. From them I keep shedding and shedding, offering the world only what seems necessary. If I speak everything that rises, I’ll either be branded wicked or given the name “mad.” It may be wrong, but it feels true. Shedding certain thoughts, and shedding the words that would carry them, is nothing new. It may even be good.
In my house we owned an iron safe, weighed at least 150 kilograms. My great-grandfather used it. When I was twenty, I moved it and set it in place by myself. Two years ago I bought a 75-inch television. The delivery arrived; I had to unpack it, assemble it, lift it, set it onto the stand. It must have weighed fifty kilos. I lifted it and placed it and twisted my neck.
It’s clear, in another twenty years, I may not even be able to lift fifteen kilograms. Perhaps I’ll only be able to hoist my grandchildren and spin them into laughter until they’re five. Every day, I walk by shedding. shedding a little weight, shedding a little distance. In body, and in mind, I tell myself. With the understanding that strength will thin in the future, I feel like shedding the pride of “me.” I can try, at least. I can loosen my grip on the image of the one who never needs help.
In one of our group reading session, we discussed ’The Brothers Karamazov’. In one session we spoke about forgiveness: how is it possible to forgive those who have harmed you? A co-reader said forgiving those who harmed us is not a freedom we grant them, but a freedom we grant ourselves. That night, in my mind, I made a list of everyone I needed to forgive.
One by one, I did it. As I forgave, they loosened and fell away from my mind, like dry leaves in a wind that doesn’t announce itself. The mind grew lighter. A moment of realizing that forgiving, and shedding, can be the same kind of liberation. And at the very top of the list was me.
When I forgave some of my mistakes, some of my pettiness, and lifted my head, the world itself looked a fraction brighter, as if someone had wiped a thin film off the glass. Even forgiving those who harmed you is possible. It’s liberation. It’s shedding.
What keeps a human being alive is the capacity to learn. Every day, the world tells me to learn something new. More, more, pushing me forward. In the Western mindset, moving ahead and building oneself up is called success. In an Eastern mindset, losing oneself little by little is called success. I try to give the attention I give to learning, in equal measure, to shedding what I’ve learned.
“Unlearning is more important than learning.” This is my unshakable belief.
And in the past year I’ve shed many things. Most of all, I had been learning to speak, to write, even to be politically correct. I’ve shed some of that. I’ve decided I don’t need to be correct in every moment. Shedding is a kind of weightlessness. Even if I’m wrong, in the way I know, I can open my wings.
Speech. Speech. Since childhood my friends, out of love, have said I have some ability to gather what lies in the mind and speak it. My work involves speech every day. I have crossed the stage of sitting alone in VS Code and coding. I don’t know if that is “growth,” but today in a single day I do design walkthroughs, architecture forums, stakeholder management, release planning and comms, end-to-end solution accountability.
It is speech, speech, speech.
I do it knowing that one day I will shed it. That is the sad, painful truth. The voice I rely on will not always be mine to command. The voice that gives me a living, The voice that makes my work easy, hopefully the voice that makes a difference to my co workers will be lost one day and I accept it gracefully.
For some months now, the mind has been telling me to shed speech. A love for silence has grown. The mind longs to listen more deeply to others. For a few days I have shed excessive talking. I have sit in front of a rock for hours together. No speech. Not even a word of sigh. When speech is shed, the mind gathers itself. It becomes still like a room after guests leave, when the air finally remembers its own shape.
Shedding is nothing new. And yet I feel each shedding as a new birth.
I think about why my mind went toward shedding at all.
That cold morning in the Dandenong Ranges, I met a tree shedding its bark. People had written their names on it. The tree did not argue. It did not carry their ink as a burden. It simply shed it.
I wondered about some people who force a lot onto me. expectations, thoughts, negativity, their private weather. I have carried it like it was mine. I don’t have to. I can learn the tree’s old, quiet skill. I must shed them, and be a tree.
With a new birth, I am a tree.
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