Stacking Stones

When I’m out hiking I frequently come across stacks of stones.  I don’t subscribe to the myth that they are created by Sasquatch as hunting tactics but I do find them intriguing. Across the world, there is evidence that stone stacking has been used for navigating land and sea long before we arrived.  Often these stacked rock piles are used as guide markers to aid hikers on tricky trails.  I rarely hike to a waterfall where I don’t find a variety of stacked stones.  I believe many times these monuments are created to leave a message that voices “I was here”.  

I was listening to someone comparing the similarities of the Apostle Paul being stoned in Lystra to when Paul (then Saul) assisted in the stoning of Stephen. When the rocks hit him and piled up, Paul could have been buried under the weight (not only the weight of the rocks but the words being hurled at him that brought back memories from his past).  Despite being left for dead he mustered his strength to rise. 

The story reminded me of rocks thrown at us by the world. Hopefully not actual rocks, but words that hit hard.   Some rocks thrown miss, some bounce off, but some land and leave a mark. Rocks can be thrown by people we don’t know, or they can be thrown by family and friends.  Often people don’t even recognize they are throwing stones, they mean well, but when a rock lands it still stings.  

Eventually, the bruise fades away but the memory we associate with that mark stays with us. What we do with the memory is key.  We have two choices:

• We let rocks and the marks they leave pile up and hold us back.   We let that mark become a weight of limiting belief that leads to a limited life.  We allow those marks, no longer visible to others, to shake our self-confidence and ability to speak out.  We begin to lose our voice; we retreat behind a wall we erect with the stones thrown at us and stop sharing our experience or the knowledge we’ve gained.  The value we could have shared with others we hold back.  We leave no monument that says, “I was here” and no marker to help others navigate.

OR

• We use the experience to learn how to dodge hurled rocks.  We nurse the occasional bruise, acknowledge the healing, then use the experience to make us stronger.  We grow as we go.  We maintain our voice by learning to recognize limiting beliefs and we build self-confidence.  Instead of letting rocks pile up on us, we stack those stones to climb to new heights.  We create vivid lives, leaving guide markers for others that are passing through the trail we are helping to forge.

Nietzsche said “There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.”  There will always be people willing to throw stones our way. We can choose to stack those stones, use them to rise, and leave them as a monument to overcoming obstacles.