Have you ever watched a snake shed its skin?
When the time comes, it isn’t sentimental – it just leaves it in the grass and moves on.
It does this when it no longer needs it, when the old skin has served its purpose and the new skin is ready for adventures unknown.
The snake sheds the old skin because it is wrinkled, dry and uncomfortable and has no more life in it.
And the snake is wise.
The Covid lock down has turned us all into anchorites, fixed to a place; anchored.
It has made life more anxious in some ways, but also made it simpler; with fewer decisions to take.
And it is possible, I have heard this, that it throws into sharper relief those people and activities that give us life and those that damage us.
Perhaps we were too busy before to notice these things; but the pause has helped us see.
It may even be some old skin has become apparent – dry old skin we’ve been dragging about for years but which could usefully be shed.
We don’t need to know the future to shed an old skin; it offers us familiarity but no security.
It’s just that we can’t say hello to something new until we have said goodbye to something old.
