“I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.” -Plato
In the history of all Christmas presents ever received, the most memorable would have to be the pebble from China given to me by my grade 11 Biology teacher. She explained it as ‘a piece of eternity in your pocket’, which matched the infinity symbol hand-drawn by her husband on its surface. She said that we should hold the pebble when we are happy and even through times of hardship and somehow it will always make things better. I don’t know about you, but that initially seemed like an overly optimistic perspective on the capacity of an inanimate compilation of minerals that people skip across the nearby lake. However, when you think about it, the value to the simplistic pebble is beyond superficial comprehension.
Pebbles, in more ways than one, are comparable to individuals such as you and I. Each one is unique and shaped by the waves that crash over it. It has its own cracks and curves all dependent on how the world shapes it. The amazing thing about the pebble is that it is literally a piece of eternity. Every fiber of its being existed since the beginning of measurable time, hence it holds a piece of all that came before it. Within us lies that same measure of forever.
As we studied in the Genetics unit, our existence is dependent on our posterity, the past experiences of our ancestors and in that sense we too exist as a piece of forever. Pebbles are shaped by waves that arrive on the calm morning on the bay or as the sun sets on the horizon. Yet the calm waters are not what shape the pebble, it’s the rough waves that come in the middle of grey-skied storms. We hold in our hands a perfect reflection of our lives, mapped out in sine waves and cosine waves of carrying amplitudes and frequencies which all contribute to our development and maturity. The ups and downs we face on our journey are what give us the jagged edges and smooth curves and all the texture of life in between.
Who we have become varies as our existence is rooted in each valuable moment in time we experience. This sea of the world tosses us from the highs to the lows in an motion of madness and beauty. It is his cycle of turbulent waters balanced with the calm after the storm that molds us into who we are.
Christmas signifies the end of the year and a new beginning. It is an opportunity for us to reflect at all the waves and their highs and lows and how they shaped us this past year. But it is also an opportunity to hold onto that piece of eternity and have hope in all that is to come. That seemingly insignificant pebble, among thousands of others just like it on the face of the earth has a unique story of its own to tell. A story encompassing its history, reflecting what it stands to be today.
heartonherkeys 