“Your efforts may seem to amount to little more than the dropping of a stone in the ocean, but consider the ripples.” Anon.
Or consider this…
Don’t drop a stone in the ocean, just.
What if you take your time to stroll up and down the shore, scuffling your feet, kicking the stones out from under, searching for that one in a thousand that would serve your purpose?
Not the shiniest or prettiest perhaps, likely one quite plain which would go unnoticed without a keen eye and a steeled intent.
You are focused on selecting the perfect stone with precision qualities. The bottom would be almost flat, not perfectly but with the slightest curvature. Its shape could be somewhat circular but preferably with a bit of triangulation so that it fits snuggly in the crook of your forefinger and thumb. Light but not too light lest it gets caught in the air. Edges are to be rounded by eons of washing and tumbling. A newly crafted thin piece of slate perhaps only a millennium old, however smooth, flat, tempting, is far too young and unseasoned to serve your purpose.
That’s it. You stroll and scuff and scour, kicking and picking up and turning over dozens of pretenders until you find one that matches your imagination.
Now, to add effort and skill as you prepare to skip your stone across the water. A successful toss requires creating a slingshot effect with your arm, as baseball pitchers do. First, you nestle the stone in that sweet spot between your thumb and forefinger. You bend low to the water so that the stone trajectory will intersect at a 30-degree angle. You wait for the calm between the waves. You cock your arm. At the precise moment, you fling, adding spin as your release.
This is not a simple plop of a single stone swallowed by the depths of the ocean. This is skill, focused intent, the imagination exerting its will over the stone-cold reality of hard against soft, mass pressuring water. This is a work of art, of wonder, a filament of imagination temporarily binding the laws of nature so that a window is opened onto the elasticity and the mutability of matter. If you are skillful in your artistry and the water is calm and there is a sufficient measure of good fortune, the stone will skip lightly along the surface 3, 6, maybe 16 times until the stone is spent force and surrenders itself to the ocean.
A Miracle
When your projectile hits the water a miracle happens. The forward thrust and spin bounce it across the surface, stretching the skin of the water, temporarily suspending the laws of gravity. For that brief moment, no more than a few seconds, your world is transformed by magic and wonder.
A world with limitless possibilities. If we can dream it, envision it and bring to bear on our creation the requisite level of skill, intent, and effort, then it can be.
The Dance
The mind races to capture the yet unrealized: the dance still to be shaped, the landscape not yet captured, the perfect chord aching to be discovered. Whatever your craft, a dancer, painter, writer, singer. You lace up your dance shoes, you carefully select your paintbrush and palette, you sing to your teddy bear, your string your prayer beads, all with a similar sense of unbounded possibility.
We do not change the world with an artless and thoughtless chuck of a rock into the water. We change the world by infusing our moments with artistry, effort, and imagination.
A Blessing for Rock-throwers and the like:
May the winds and waters calm in your welcoming.
May you find the perfect stone.
May it skip beyond counting,
And may the ripples carry magic and mystery to the furthest shores.