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Are you Pearl or a Boulder?

Last night I was pondering if there were any ways of categorising Change and giving me some kind of framework to think about it within. After some musing it occurred to me that most change falls within one of two general categories. Firstly there are those things that remove something from you, like the gradual erosion of a boulder, slowly smoothing it down over time. Then there are those things add things to you, like the slow layers that build up round a pearl. Interestingly, both objects end up with their rough edges smoothed away.

Life seems to have this way of giving us either new layers through processes like education and growing up and growing older. It also removes rough edges by very similar means. Each relationship we enter has the potential to change us; each place we visit, each person we meet and open up to.

For me Life is a journey and I see its purpose as being the gradual polishing of the essential us. Sometimes the things that are the most painful shape us most, sometimes we can learn more joyously. When the going gets a little tough, it can sometimes, help to recognise this process at work. It can give us the faith to endure and perhaps open us to co-operating with the process.

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” Alan Cohen

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 10:15 and is filed under General, Personal Change, Values & Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Are you Pearl or a Boulder?”

  1. ida_h says:
    4 April , 2008 at 17:12

    I would like to think I am a bit of both.. I find myself missing my late mother in law today because of a programme that was on Radio 4 earlier today about Barbara Cartland and her visits to London’s grand hotels for afternoon tea. My mother in law was a real Pearl and loved these grand hotels too, the last one we visted was Claridges (sp)

  2. richardderwentcooke says:
    4 April , 2008 at 17:15

    Ida

    That is a lovely way to remember her, and I am sure she would take great pleasure in knowing you still thought of her in those places..

    In truth, of course, we are all a bit of both

  3. amanda_h says:
    4 April , 2008 at 20:15

    Lovely Richard …
    by Amanda Hamilton on 4-Apr-08 3:14pm
    I so agree …..

    From a psychotherapists point of view, the first 30 years of life are about the personality – how we look, our bodies, how others perceive us – it’s all SOOO important.

    Then sometime between 30 and 40, the soul comes along and says “right – you’ve had your turn, now you’re mine”.

    There’s no negotiating with this changeover – those that try to “buy more time” are hit with ME, CFS, IBS to name but a few “soul bargaining refusals”.

    And then we start to learn about who we are – what we like, what we don’t like, where our boundaries truly lie, what it means to us to use words like Truth, Honour, Justice, Virtue etc etc …

    That process, the perfecting of the pearl, and the honing of the boulder, brings about a brilliant shine to the true person that we really are, and always were … could we but have seen it …

    GOD aren’t we human beings JUST MAGNIFICENT …!

    http://www.amanda-hamilton.com and http://www.casa-la-celada.com

  4. richardderwentcooke says:
    4 April , 2008 at 20:17

    Thanks Amanda; I know this is true for many people. I am very aware of these phases but my timing was a little different. And “Yes!”, the Universe sculpts us in to the most magnificence shapes

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