What if birth is not a beginning but a riddle wrapped in skin, a folded geometry of soul left to unfold one breath at a time?
What if we are not meant to bloom, but to fracture slowly to wrestle with hunger until it teaches us the shape of longing, until the horizon no longer outruns our hearts?
We do not begin with wisdom. We begin as ache pure, primal ache an unfinished sentence spoken in the dialect of our need.
The world does not explain. It vibrates. It taps at the shell of our unknowing until stillness becomes a language and silence becomes a guide.
Somewhere between the third fall of pride and the first burial of wonder, we feel the scaffolding stir not outside us, but within. Not to lift us, but to remind us: we were always meant to carry sky in the depth of our being.
Transformation is not ascension. It is demolition. It is the collapse of the old temple we mistook for self.
Becoming light is not weightless. It is surrender to the burden of awareness, to the salt of silence, to the dissolving of every name you gave yourself to survive.
The cocoon is not sleep. It is judgment. Each cell recalls the lie that shaped it. Each limb whispers, “I was never whole there.”
Metamorphosis is not polite. It breaks locks you didn't know were doors.
And flight? Flight is not motion. It is the cessation of resistance. It is the unlearning of destination. It is the tasting of sky with a mouth no longer asking for proof.
I do not seek meaning. I live alongside it as shadow, as rhythm, as breath turned inward. I wear my past as softened armor. I bow to the wind not for freedom, but for its honesty it names nothing, yet moves all.
And perhaps, this is the truth we miss: we were never meant to become. We were always meant to remember what we already are.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin July 2025 The Unfolding Within