The Pebble Who Was Once A Mountain

To your eyes I am still and yet I have moved thousands of miles.

Slowly. Slowly.

I am but a piece of who I was; chiseled by gravity, by motion, by time itself.

In the beginning I was everything, just as you were.

But now everything has been torn into smaller and more complicated pieces.

Now we must separate ourselves in order to define ourselves.

Mustn’t we?

I started as infinity. I started as you started. But there is not enough space nor time to begin at the beginning. So I begin a mere ninety-five thousand years ago, a piece of time you pretend to wrap your mind around. I begin lifetimes and lifetimes away from you, eons further from where I started. I present to you a piece of my existence in hope it will help you better understand your own.

I begin as a mountain large and proud. I stand for decades and decades and decades. My fingers scrape the clouds as I inch upwards towards the ever-changing sky. Rain drips down my faces, becoming snow as I rise further into the clouds. I am aware of my greatness. And yet I am aware that I am one of many. I can feel myself existing in the range around me. Peak after peak after peak. Different, and yet the same. I see myself in the others and they see themselves in me.

Twenty thousand years later the plates of the earth rub against each other a bit more violently than usual, and a mountain I am no more. Now I am a boulder, an angular jagged form falling from thousands of feet in the air. In this stage of my life I fall quickly, I plummet if you will. I scream as I fall; crashing, colliding with myself until I am no longer myself, I am…something else. I leave behind what I once was, though part of whom I was stands there still.

The mountain is not as proud without me, though perhaps that is my ego lying as yours does. My old mountain, my old self has been molded just as I have. Rounded, smoothed, caressed by the winds of time.

Mine edges and those of the mountain are worn down by a sheet of ice. The remainder of the mountain stands its ground, but I move. I am pushed forwards (or backwards or sideways depending on your vantage). The ice holds me in its clutches as it travels down the continent. I flow with other debris out into the frozen sea, the glacial planes vast and unforgiving.

I travel quickly, and then slowly, and then quickly again. Some years I move tens of meters, others mere inches. I am taken to so many different places, I see so many different things. It is not my choice where I go, and this is fine with me. Throughout the course of infinity I will see it all, feel it all, be it all. I am in no hurry. I know that there is no ultimate destination, no final resting place.

Throughout my journey, I leave markings on the ground beneath me, vibrating etchings into the earth. An image of me is created, written in stone. The ice sheet drags me further and further from my mountain. And with each etching, I lose part of myself. I am boulder, rock, pebble. Eaten away. Devoured by the earth.

Eventually the ice melts away and I am left on the ground. I sit in a field of bright green grasses and splendid yellow flowers. I am as content as I have ever been. I love this place with its calm and quiet. The wind sweeps by in gentle gusts and I am still heavy enough to remain still in this pleasant breeze. The sun beams down on me and the grass and the flowers and this is the most perfect moment I have yet to experience. But I don’t hold onto it, I know I cannot grip it too tightly. To try to capture this moment and live in it forever would be to ruin it, to destroy it. So I enjoy it while it lasts, pleased just to be here and to be given this opportunity to exist.

The sky fills with clouds and the rains come and flood my field. I ride along a trickle that turns into a stream that turns into a river. I sit below the glimmering waters and am happy here too. And so the cycle goes on and on.

We cannot expect to hold on to ourselves as we are in a single moment. Permanence is a lie we tell ourselves to feel larger, heavier, more important. If we remain obsessed, viewing ourselves as parts instead of the whole, permanence is the lie we must tell in order to bring meaning to our reality.

We cannot exist forever in the same form. But we can and do exist forever if we embrace all forms available to us.

In this moment, my form is small. Smoothed and shrunken by time, I have been shaped by powers I do not fully understand. I am a pebble who was once a mountain.

The river dries up as the seasons change and now I find myself caught in your shoe, grabbed by your hand, thrown off into another place, slightly different from the one I was in before. I continue to be moved by forces seemingly outside of my control. I am tossed aside. To you, I am insignificant.

But look back and see how large I once was. See how proud I once was. Imagine us as we once were, one and the same.

But now we are separate. We are pieces. We hide within ourselves, afraid of the grandiosity of the whole. Desperately clinging to our individuality, we are happy to be pebbles instead of rocks instead of mountains instead of worlds.

So throw me away, I will continue on my journey. Changing. Always changing.

How easy it is to forget me. How easy it is to forget yourself.