The Beautiful Complexity of Being Human
Some time ago, my animal wisdom circle spent a month meditating with the spirit of hermit crab. Lately I’ve been thinking on her gentle compassionate energy as I’ve been navigating some thickets in the human world. Hermit crab has a way of bringing me back to the basics and reminding me that it actually is a wondrous thing to be alive.
When I first met hermit crab in my meditation, I found her lumbering across a shimmering beach under the nighttime sky. I didn’t know it at the time, but it turns out that hermit crabs are nocturnal, so our nighttime meeting was fitting. The hermit crab who came forward to meet me absolutely radiated with contentment. Her body seemed to hum with gentle happiness as she lumbered across the glistening grains of sand.
She looked up as she felt me settling into the still warm sand. She seemed somewhat amused by my curiosity. When I asked if she would speak with me, she gave me an appraising look. Then she reached out a claw and plucked something out of my shoulder, as though I had a strand of cat fur along for the ride. She held it in her pincer for me to see, before tossing it into the surf. It wasn’t a bit of cat fur at all, but instead was a tangled thread of murky energy.
“You had some of it on you,” she said as she tossed it into the waves. “Some of what?” I asked as my eyes followed the strand. I watched it bobbing atop the waves before it became an indistinguishable part of the glittering ocean.
Some of that, she said, turning her back on the waves and nodding her head in the direction of a city that rose up at the sand’s edge. I turned my gaze away from the gentle waves to see the silhouettes of tall buildings rising up to meet the stars. Light spilled from windows set into the buildings in orderly intervals.
“Look,” the hermit crab urged. “Really look.” As I sat with her, the hermit crab’s eyes lent me a new perspective. Instead of seeing only tall rectangles punctuated by light, I began to see glowing threads of energy everywhere. Some of the threads were strung between buildings like strands of garden lights. Some threads zipped out of the doors and rushed around the block. Some met in a big, fierce, tangled ball that zapped and glowed from within. The strands were everywhere, pulsing, flowing, rushing.
Some strands seemed to be made of dreams. Those strands spilled out of windows and flew off toward the far reaches of the horizon. Others appeared to be bolts of fear. The fear energy careened through the streets, grasping and pulling at other strands as they rushed by. Some strands draped themselves gently over beloveds, while others, that were formed from scarcity and need arced and snapped menacingly.
It was stunningly beautiful, overwhelming, and frightening all at once. I shook my head, trying to return to the usual sight of silent black buildings standing in the gathering darkness. Only now that I had seen the energy strands, I couldn’t unsee them.
I turned back to the little crab with questions that I couldn’t quite form into words. That’s how we see it, she explained. The human world. And you had some of it on you she said, returning to the issue of the strand she had plucked off my shoulder. Some that didn’t belong to you.
I imagined walking down city sidewalks trying to duck over and around the grasping threads, yet still emerging weighted down with yearnings, anxieties, pain, need, and dreams that went astray. Yes, the little crab said, picking up on my thoughts, it must be hard. You don’t tend to realize how connected to one another you truly are. She looked at me thoughtfully and invited me to sit next to her. The beach around us was quiet. Bits of sand glinted in the moonlight as the waves washed onto the shore. The little hermit crab’s body still hummed peacefully underneath the recycled shell she wore. She was at once contained within herself and vibrating softly in harmony with the earth around her.
How do you do it? I asked her. How is it you don’t have such tangles? She sent out a wave of energy that enveloped me like a warm, rich laugh. Oh, it’s different here in our world she said. Here, I’ll show you. Once again, she lent me her vision and I saw softly glowing strands of energy emanating from her that looked like spokes of a wheel with her shell at the center. Other little hermit crabs glowed happily at the end of each spoke.
I’m not at the center of it though, she said, before you get the wrong idea. I looked again and saw that each crab at the end of her spokes also had glowing spokes emanating from them, with other hermit crabs at the end of those spokes. The awkward, yet wonderful compelling little beings radiated out across the beach, each of them connected to one another by overlapping circles. I saw the way they went about their business, easily rotating around one another while happily plucking nourishing morsels from the surf’s edge. I saw the amazing way the little hermit crabs came together and lined up according to size when it was time for a shell swap, and then happily returned to their own business with their needs met and their new shells safely in place.
I felt the way the little crab next to me giggled with delight at the rush of water that welled up under her shell when she approached the water’s edge. I felt the deepening vibrations of her satisfied hum when the warmth of the sand infused her being. I felt her cells vibrate with love and delight at being alive, at embodying a beautiful, harmonious, and perhaps somewhat quirky aspect of creation. We don’t complicate things she said. We are simply creation experiencing itself. In fact, we delight in being creation experiencing itself and that’s enough. That’s no small thing though, is it? She asked with a smile. No, I smiled back at her as I dug my toes into the enveloping sand. Coming from a world filled with human complications, it’s no small thing.
Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed by the tangled threads of the human world, I recall that little hermit crab’s joy at simply being alive. Breath seems to flow a little more easily in my body when I recall her gentle hum of happiness. If you feel inclined to reach out, I am sure she would be delighted to share her uncomplicated delight with you as well.
