Monday, April 4, 2011

Of Stones and Journeys

We are each the sculptor and the stone. The purpose of our lives is to find the beauty that is within. Inside each of us is perfection. Somewhere, under this stone slab we start out as, is a wondrous statue.

I’ve spent plenty of time working away at it, knowing the truth that it isn’t necessary to add anything to the statue. We aren’t really creating it. We are simply freeing it from the stone prison surrounding it.

As it turns out, I’m not without my mistakes. I had taken my life-altering experience as a chance to re-create myself, in whatever image I saw was the best. So I tried. I wanted to become this great image I had in mind for me. I started to get upset. I wasn’t there yet. Why wasn’t I? What was I doing wrong? Why weren’t people seeing this image I wanted them to see?

It’s true, most of it was identical to who I am. It was maybe two degrees off in a different direction in the beginning. But travel long enough, and those two degrees could mean the difference between London and Timbuktu. I had fallen victim to the very rules I ran my life by. “Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self.” I had blinded myself to reason to try to add more onto a stone that I should have been chipping away at.

Cut the unnecessary. That is the stone-worker’s job, his passion. That should be ours. We don’t need to turn ourselves into something else, we don’t need to add more responsibilities so we look better, we don’t need to buy all these new things just because they’re out there. Remove what isn’t needed. Shave off another layer.

My life-altering event wasn’t an excuse to glue everything back on to the statue. It was an upheaval. A great many pieces broke off, revealing much of what was underneath. I’ve come to realize that what I need to do is to use what IS, and form around that. There, reason lies. There, truth lies. There, life lies. There, I lie.

Life is your journey, and yours alone. Walk it like it’s the only one you have. Because it is.

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