Who Wants to be an Oyster?

source: Dr. Maxwell Maltz
book: Psycho-Cybernetics
read from Spirit-Controlled Temperament by Dr. Tim LaHaye

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     One final word about preventing and removing emotional hurts. To live creatively, we must be willing to be a little vulnerable. We must be willing to be hurt a little, if necessary, in creative living. A lot of people need a thicker and tougher emotional skin than they have. But they need only a tough emotional hide or epidermis - not a shell. To trust, to love, to open ourselves to emotional communication with other people is to run the risk of being hurt. If we are hurt once, we can do one of two things. We can build a thick protective shell, or scar tissue, to prevent being hurt again, live like an oyster, and not be hurt. Or we can “turn the other cheek”, remain vulnerable and go on living creatively.

     An oyster is “never” hurt. He has a thick shell which protects him from everything. He is isolated. An oyster is secure, but not creative. He cannot “go after” what he wants - he must wait for it to come to him. An oyster knows none of the “hurts” of emotional communication with his environment - but neither can an oyster know the joys.