From the Egg to the Chick

Growing inner strength and breaking the surface with the egg and the chick analogy. In an egg, the hard part is on the outside, the shell, and the soft part is on the inside (the white and the yolk).

The shell prevents the liquid it contains from slopping out before a chick has had time to grow inside. Properly hatched, immersed in heat, the egg will allow its contents to develop little by little.

When the chick is fully developed inside the shell, the initial state reverses: the hard part is now on the inside – the chick skeleton – and the vulnerable position on the outside – the flesh and feathers.

And the moment it acquires its internal form and solidity, the chick no longer needs to be protected: the shell becomes not only useless to it but suffocating. In breaking the surface, the chick proves that its development is complete. It has internalised in its skeleton the rigidity that initially characterised the external shell of the egg that protected it.

The metamorphosis from egg to the chick is an interesting analogy for the transformations that affect all humans. The shell represents the structures that help us develop as children: from school to family, from social to political.

In the first part of our lives, these contexts provide us with a structure with the necessary boundaries to allow us to develop our potential. However, at some point, we all have to break the shell.

People who develop their psychological backbone and learn to stand on their own two feet with their values no longer need to rely on external structures: others use them as a point of reference and support.

Social evolution has constantly come about thanks to individuals who possessed the inner strength to break through the outer shells of their era, which had become obsolete, and propose new social, political, or professional organisation models to future generations—at the same time, waiting, of course, for these to be broken again by new generations.

The chick will only be able to become an adult and create shells to be fertilised by breaking that shell, not by remaining imprisoned within it.

And we, too, like the chick, can grow to the extent that we take care of the shell, we work to make it mature, but at some point, we find the courage to break it.