The Stone

A stone in the river, worn smooth by rushing current, allows the river to flow past it, never letting itself be caught up in the onrush, implacable, serene, impervious to that which happens around it.

I wish I could be like that stone.

But I’m not, and on some level I know I never will be. I don’t have that much internal strength.

And, if you stop to really think about it, neither does the stone.

Because a stone in the river, worn smooth by rushing current, is with time worn completely away, taken apart bit by bit by the torrent unleashed upon it by an uncaring world, and however much it might try to maintain it’s implacable serenity, the damage, with time, is done. It loses bits of itself to the onrush, bits too small to be perceived as it’s happening but nonetheless vital and, in the end, it is destroyed, broken apart, made unrecognizable.

What was unified is shattered, what once was impervious reduced to nothing more than dust in water, invisible to the naked eye, washed out to sea and quickly forgotten by any who might once have known it. The stone is gone, and gone forever, and what is undone can never be put back together again.

And so, I come to realize, I’m more like that stone than I’d rather be.

A point that, I do understand, the passage of time will only make more and more clear…