Forget the moss. Think edges. Stones that roll lose sharp edges. Edges break off, and in the process, rocks become rounded, the geologist's term for smoothness. “Rounded” rocks don’t have to be spherical; they just have to be smooth like those pebbles, shingle, and cobbles used in heated stone massages in spas.
Through a number of processes, pieces of “parent” rock break to become units of varying sizes and shapes. The largest of the pieces, called boulders, eventually wear down to become sand, silt, and even clay, all terms geologists use to designate particle, or clast, sizes. As rocks wear away to smaller sizes, they lose their angularity, or roughness. Call it the “life of a rock”: boulder, cobble, pebble, coarse sand, medium sand, fine sand, silt, clay, colloid, elemental composition, nothing.
Since you broke off the parent rock, you, too, have lost some angularity and acquired some smoothness. Interestingly, you have also undergone other breaks that interrupt the smoothness with new edges. Where are you in the process? What is the state of your roundness?
Have you just left the parent rock? Do you still exhibit rough edges from the original break? Have you been tumbling through falls and bumping into other rocks that initially wore down the original edges and subsequently created new ones over many years and through many experiences and relationships?
Here’s “the thing”: Both the process of smoothing and the process of making new angular edges require some banging around. You got smoothness because you underwent collisions; you got new edges because you underwent further collisions.
That’s life, a series of collisions. That sounds like a pessimistic assessment, doesn’t it? Yet, every collision on the way to a particle of no dimension, has the potential to knock off a rough edge and make a new smoothness, easy to handle, comforting to feel, and, at least temporarily, just right for the easy life in the spa.
Through a number of processes, pieces of “parent” rock break to become units of varying sizes and shapes. The largest of the pieces, called boulders, eventually wear down to become sand, silt, and even clay, all terms geologists use to designate particle, or clast, sizes. As rocks wear away to smaller sizes, they lose their angularity, or roughness. Call it the “life of a rock”: boulder, cobble, pebble, coarse sand, medium sand, fine sand, silt, clay, colloid, elemental composition, nothing.
Since you broke off the parent rock, you, too, have lost some angularity and acquired some smoothness. Interestingly, you have also undergone other breaks that interrupt the smoothness with new edges. Where are you in the process? What is the state of your roundness?
Have you just left the parent rock? Do you still exhibit rough edges from the original break? Have you been tumbling through falls and bumping into other rocks that initially wore down the original edges and subsequently created new ones over many years and through many experiences and relationships?
Here’s “the thing”: Both the process of smoothing and the process of making new angular edges require some banging around. You got smoothness because you underwent collisions; you got new edges because you underwent further collisions.
That’s life, a series of collisions. That sounds like a pessimistic assessment, doesn’t it? Yet, every collision on the way to a particle of no dimension, has the potential to knock off a rough edge and make a new smoothness, easy to handle, comforting to feel, and, at least temporarily, just right for the easy life in the spa.
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