My eldest son has a great t-shirt with 5 different coloured, sharp toothed piranha fish embroidered on the front. Once we were naming the colour of each fish in English and Italian (his mum is from Sicily): purple – viola, yellow – giallo, orange – arancione, blue – blu and green – verde. It was only later, as he was running across the room, that I noticed the entire t-shirt was brown! In focussing solely on the embroidery we had neglected to recognise the most obvious colour of all, that of the t-shirt itself, without which there would be no little piranhas.
Similarly in life we have come to overlook the wonder of our essential nature, becoming instead fixated solely on the content of the experience, out of which we identify ourself exclusively with one small fragment—the separate ‘me’.
Just as the material of the t-shirt enables the embroidered design to exist, so what we truly are is the very fabric of all that is, giving life to those sharp toothed piranhas, the neglected t-shirt, this story, the thoughts that reflect upon it, the movement of breath, the sensation of blood coursing through the veins—the entire expression of this inexplicable, shape shifting, magical moment.
