Hermit Crabs

Unlike most crabs, hermit crabs have a soft, fragile skeleton and must find an empty shell to shelter in. When they grow too big for their current shell, they must find a new shell that is big enough to fit in but not so big that they can't carry it around. We can think of a hermit crab's shell as being similar to a knowledge base or conceptual framework. There are a million stimuli flooding into our brain at every second. You pick any topic under the sun and you will find dozens of experts claiming different and often contradictory positions on those topics. Like the hermit crab our brains are soft and fragile and we have to find a set of ideas that can simplify and bring order to the chaos around us. We have to find a set of beliefs and values and consistent facts that is big enough to fit our intelligence and curiosity but is not so complex or challenging as to overwhelm us. Then as we learn and grow, we may start to feel a little cramped and find out that the shell which was so good at reducing the complexity and chaos into simplicity and order is too confining. We have to go out and find a bigger shell, a bigger conceptual framework. It's like with math. The first shell we try is arithmetic. Just numbers that we can add, subtract, multiply and divide. Then we move onto geometry and now our bigger shell can hold not just numbers but shapes as well. And then we go to the bigger shell of algebra and now we've got numbers and letters and equal signs. If we find ourselves with a worldview that keeps giving us grief because we keep getting our basic presumptions wrong, then maybe it's time to look for a new, bigger shell. If we try out a new worldview that is exhausting us because we can't wrap our head around it, then maybe we're not ready for that shall or maybe that shall isn't for us. We might sometimes see a shell we really like that doesn't fit us yet and we have to be patient and keep learning and growing because if we try to take on a conceptual framework that is too big for us it's just going to wear us out and make us miserable. And we might sometimes long for a simpler time and think that life would be better if we could go back to that one shell we used to love so much. But we're here to keep learning and keep growing, to keep trading one set of facts and beliefs and assumptions for a newer, more complicated but also more rewarding and more nuanced understanding of the world and our place in it.