Nurple - by Mehrdad Riyahi
We were born naked, and we shall die so. In the meantime, we live our lives shrouded by many skins: layers of hair, of cloth, of armor against the elements and against each other; layers of raw emotion or conditioned logic or concocted philosophies to which we give meaning. Our pelts give us security, identity, ambiguity; they justify and stifle us. But do we wrap ourselves in these skins for our own sakes, or are they imposed by others? Do our coverings imply what we deem our identity to be—our “self expression,” if you will—or do they merely project a blinding reflection back into society’s gawking face?
From this perspective, to be truly naked is to not live; therefore, one could argue that we are never really naked in life. Look at yourself and wonder. Appearances can be deceiving.
True nakedness implies the shedding of all layers; it is not merely enough to step out of discarded clothes, it is not enough to argue that you’ve scrubbed your life clean and are presenting a “clean slate.” No fear; there is no clean slate; there is always the shadow of a mark, a memory, a white blush of smudged chalk. There is no way to strip a living human of everything. The strongest souls who have survived prisons, wars, tortures, the worst ordeals in life—and have emerged whole, albeit shaken or scathed—are the ones who have realized this. Humans have been beaten, raped, bruised, their body parts trimmed or cut off. Their layers have been defaced, torn, ravaged, but their souls have not been broken. They have not been rendered truly naked. There is always something else that remains, something else to hold on to, something to believe—and with that something comes survival.
"Angreek87"
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