Sunday, December 16, 2012

Pebbles


The pebbles are us.

We were born on earth, as grains. We were not to know where our self started and where it ended. We were seamlessly one with all the sand, with all the world, and we lived in the infinite graceful oneness of the universe with no boundaries, no ego, no knowledge of the self, no hurt and no joy, as pristine babies.

And then, it kicked in. Sheer inevitable time. Time washed us brutally, showed our boundaries, bound our parts together and hardened us into 'being', made us into beautiful little stones, our own selves, in infinitely different shades and shapes. And then, we were different.

We came in precisely polished shapes, beautiful and smooth. In purple. In sky blue. In a white that was whiter than pure light. In pitch black. The colors and shapes were all pleasing to the senses to the passers by. One could look at the miracle of a creation that was a pebble, and wonder at its magnificence and innate beauty, and the joy that all this design supposedly holds.

But often, also, one failed to look close enough. Beneath all the smoothness, if only one were to look closely, were rugged edges, cuts and rough imprecisions everywhere. The powerful waves that washed and shaped them, had also in equal measures tore and hurt them, and left deep scars in their inner ridges. The rugged edges were all only carefully masked by all the polish outside, and without a thoughtful trained eye, one would be fooled. The stones were a lot broken on the inside, but one could just see the polish and be carried away with all the fickle beauty that only belied the scars within. Perhaps one day, the waters would break the stone and scatter its pieces everywhere, to be forever lost.

Each stone was all by itself, on its own, battling the clubs of all the water and ruthless time, every day.

But, the pebbles weren't alone either. They were together, although separate in their own individually colored selves. When they rubbed one another, there were sparks and fire. They crackled in laughter and made noise. They wept together, when water touched them, and they changed colors, and sometimes the darkness within surfaced, and the pebbles would become black in wet tears.

And when two lonesome souls walked by the waters and looked for pebbles some day, what mattered most was not what colors they picked, but rather the act of choosing them, and to look beyond them all. Together.

And, they knew, they were pebbles themselves too. And, it was all about, ruthless time.