Submitted by Kylee:
My tattoo is picture of the inside of a Chambered Nautilus shell. The tattoo symbolizes living in the present because you can’t go back to the past and, also, relying on and learning from your past as it is your foundation for the present. The tattoo was inspired from the poem “The Chambered Nautilus” by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
This was my first tattoo and to me it represents my growth as a person through high school and now college. It reminds me to take advantage of the present day despite the possibility of setbacks in my past.
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
- Excerpt from “The Chambered Nautilus
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I have been considering getting a chambered nautilus tattoo for much the same reason as you. It does not symbolize living in the present for me, however. Instead what I see is that challenge to continually outgrow oneself through a lifelong process of learning from one’s experiences. And, as Holmes’ poem makes clear, it is fundamentally the quest for spiritual growth that should cause one to abandon that earlier self. In any case, thanks for sharing your tattoo.