The Stonecutter's Final Blow
“When nothing seems to help I go back and look at the stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
I think of all the moments in my little life, all my memories, ups and downs, and the notion that one truly fails only after giving up or not even trying or risking loss.
I think of all the success stories describing all the aspects of the human condition and human experience.
If some ancestor of ours had called it quits, or shrugged his or her shoulders then maybe we would not come into existence and have the luxuries we take for granted, included the writing or reading of this self-indulgent passage.
With the gift of our existence comes also the privilege of getting up after stumbling or falling, and going for that one hundred and first attempt at whatever rock we have chosen, or has been bestowed upon or befallen on us.
We must keep at the rock before us so that we may strike one final blow.