It’s rather dazzling to behold a pearl, but knowing how it’s created is truly fascinating. Valued for its luminescence and beauty, it wouldn’t come into existence if there were not some irritant or a perceived threat to the oyster’s mantle and inner organs. The oyster’s mantle begins to deposit a substance called nacre, also called mother of pearl, onto the foreign object. Over time, the oyster will apply several layers of nacre to the foreign body, effectively walling it off.
It’s the actual walling off of the challenge or dealing with a challenge that provides the stimulus for the layering of its “mother of pearl” that eventually leads to the creation of a pearl. There are many ways that you can interpret the creation of a pearl, but I am using this process as an analogy for how we deal with challenges or irritants in our lives.
Depending on your nature and how you respond to an irritating person or challenging life situation, this will ultimately allow creation of pearls or creation of a prisoner in their multi-layered defensive shell. The difference between the two is one of value and the other is of self-protection and isolation. It comes down to a single choice and mindset. Embracing the challenge or stressful situation at hand, promotes resiliency, greater inner confidence, and ultimately self-mastery. Knowing who you are and possessing the wherewithal to decide how you want to handle stress is a game-changer and a path leading to an empowered life.
Choosing to wall off your feelings and to not emote, leads to suppression and avoidance of what truly bothers you. Like the story of the princess and the pea, where the princess could not get a restful nights sleep no matter how many mattresses she placed on her bed. The pea represents the rejected part of your consciousness that will continue to nag you unless it is brought back into balance. Confronting and addressing the issues that lay before you, allows for the balancing of the scales and establishing ease once more.
Dealing with the stressors in your life and making a shift in perception helps to insure that you create more beauty and lay down solid layers of mother of pearl. This layering is not one of protection, but an act of conscious choice as you process through your experiences, realizing that it wasn’t good or bad, but just an experience. Life becomes a journey that is to be explored with curiosity, wonder, and awe. Life doesn’t have to be a burden when things appear to overwhelm and consume you, but rather, it can be savored and bring a sense of wholeness. So choose to process and own your experiences, especially the challenging ones to gain a greater appreciation of the life that you live. This choice and subsequent action leads to the perfect design of your pearl.
