A commonly used phrase is ‘I’ll give this to you in a nutshell’. It’s meant to extricate the complexity of life.
It’s something.
A nutshell is empty.
Maybe that’s the point of this cliche’. To leave things empty.
Simplify it.
It’s meaningless.
Yet, the shell itself points to life.
There was a nut there.
It’s a shell now but there was a nut there.
It was something that mattered.
So when I want to explain it to you in a ‘nutshell’, I want to give you the short version that doesn’t include the nut.
Why?
The nut is what meant so much to me.
Moving forward, I’d rather say,
“Let me give you the nut of this”.
I want to share this part with you. The part I make meaning of in my life. So we could perhaps connect.
I don’t want to share the shell.
That’s everything easy. The shell of me is easy to pretend to be something for you I really am not.
It’s the nut of it where you’ll really see me.
And I might not be your kind of nut. But there’s all kinds.
Cashews, almonds, walnuts, pistachios, peanuts.
There’s all kinds of nuts and shells. But the good part is always the nut.