Friday, August 8, 2008

08.08.08 - Jump in the Tumbler





When I was a kid, I had a rock tumbler. As an 8 or 9 year old, I was fascinated by it. I think rock polishing must have been a hobby of the 80’s because it doesn’t get much publicity these days.

Here’s the thing about polishing rocks; it takes forever! We’re talkin’ 4 to 6 weeks of running the tumbler everyday, all day. There are 4 steps to the process. The rocks go in with some water and some sand-like grit. The coarsest grit goes in first, then the rocks are washed and replaced with water and finer grit, then another wash and even finer grit, then finally the polishing compound. The amount of time it takes to polish a rock is not the same for all. It depends on how hard the rock is and the desired degree of smoothness in each of the steps.

I remember taking a family vacation to Colorado (before we moved there) and looking for a rock that I thought might be a geode. Geodes were my favorite because they look like your boring, everyday, run of the mill rock but if you bust them open there are sparkling crystals inside.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about maturity. I feel immature in some areas of my life. I feel like sometimes my responses and ways of thinking are childish and narrow-minded. These things have bothered me in the past few weeks.

I want to be the best person I can be. I want to grow and learn and become all that is within me. I want to tap into the hidden places, the fearful places, and the places that are waiting to be fully awakened in me. I want to explore and experience life with greater depth.

When I try to think it through, it becomes a task far too large to wrap my head around. It seems impossible. Undoing years of learned survival techniques is like swimming against the current of a roaring river.

I want to be a better communicator. I want to learn how to reach out to people in ways that cause them to know that I care. I want to expand the way I see the world around me and people who are different than me. I want to experience truth in ways that I haven’t before.

How does that happen? How does one expose potential and move it from what could be to what is?

Maybe it’s like polishing rocks. It’s a process that takes time. The amount of time may depend on how “hard” I am and how refined I choose to become. How long it takes for me will be different than it is for you. It involves repetitive steps with a variety of circumstances; some harder than others. In between steps, there may be a break; a time to wash the dust off from the previous situation and reflect on how far I’ve come in the process.Abrasive grit is necessary to slough off layers of the ordinary to reveal something extraordinary.

Let the tumbling begin...

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