At what point is a frog a frog? When does it stop being a tadpole and become a frog? When it breathes air? When it no longer has a tail? When it has all four legs?

(unknown photo credit)

I tell you, the frog was always a frog. Even before it was a tadpole. Even before then.

It is we who give it names, that limit when it is one thing and another. It doesn’t have names for itself. It just swims. It hops when it can. It breathes water, then air. It just is.

We have rules about what is and what is not, we humans. We are male, or female – until we aren’t. When a child is born that isn’t of one particular gender, the child is “intersexed” or “of ambiguous gender”. We don’t know what to call such a child – She? He? We don’t have a word for both and neither, yet the reality is there.

It doesn’t matter that we don’t have a word for that particular reality. The reality is still just as real. It is like a platypus. Is it a mammal, because it has fur? Or is it a bird, because it lays eggs? It is both. And neither. And something else.

Our words don’t shape reality. Reality shapes our words. Reality keeps on being, and we keep on trying to describe it, and we keep failing.

There is a Zen saying – “What did your face look like before your parents were born?”

Words are the same. What would a frog be if we weren’t there to call it a frog?