Shadows

This is the cause of human suffering, in Habib's opinion: Humans are like the Crow of legend, Crow who became obsessed with her shadow, pecking at it, tearing at it, scratching at it, until she woke her shadow up and it ate her so that Crow is now dead and her shadow is alive.

Humans cannot stop staring at their own shadows, at some shape they think is fixed, a shape that they come to believe is real. Everything constricts to that shape; they become only that, nothing more, and then they are dead.

Oh, life for humans on this planet would be so much less fraught with sadness if they could know one thing: that shape is an illusion. The woes and angers, the confusions and pains -- all these are born of that narrow vision, that staring into the unchanging shape of ones's own shadow.

Hotel Anegline: A Novel in 36 Voices.
Stephanie Kallos et al
2010
P. 218

Maybe with awareness we can become shape shifters, always trying on new ones, always reflecting but not fixating. That is our only hope. (M. Horvich 2012)