Life Lessons From A Rock

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                       Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

              Walt Whitman

I came across this rock whilst walking my dog. It was sitting unassumingly next to a trash can I pass every day when it caught my eye. Just before my one year old pit lab could pee on it (And it was a close save, mind you. He had is leg lifted.) I bent down to pick it up.

It reads simply, ‘Don’t give up.’  With a semicolon on the top. 

;

I don’t know where it came from or who put it there, but I can honestly tell you that this little rock changed my life today. 

Routine. To do lists. Monotony. Tragically, these have become driving forces of society.

When I find myself tangled in the rat race, the animal inside my ribcage gets restless. Restlessness turns to panic. And panic turns to disease that poisons me from the inside out. 

Depression. Anxiety. Hysteria. Self-destruction. 

Someone once told me to never go anywhere without having an escape plan in place. For much of my life, suicidal inklings were a way of keeping a window unlocked when madness caught fire to my inner room. 

I’m confident that I’m not the only one who’s felt this way. I’m just one of the few who’s willing to admit that underneath the smiles, I sought sick solace in living with one foot out the door. 

We all want to feel that our lives are significant. 

That ‘the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.’ 

Society has led us to believe that unless our verse is in all capitals and dotted with an explanation point it isn’t worth contributing. 

This way of thinking is a trap. It will chain our hands behind our back in cuffs of existential anxiety and the irony is that we need free hands to live a life of contribution. 

Significance cannot be measured. 

We must see that each day, simple interactions present great opportunities to deeply impact each other’s lives. 

Your smile, compliment, or rock might be the courage that someone needs to choose a semicolon over a period. 

By underestimating the gravity of seemingly small actions, we are robbing ourselves and each other of true fulfillment. 

I want my legacy to be like this rock. 

For if generosity and optimism are heady tonic, we should all wake up every morning with the intention of drinking each other under the table in sunshine cocktails.