A little over a year ago, I began the first of 3 surgeries.  On the second one, I was feeling a bit low.  The surgery was hard on my body and nearly as hard on my psyche.  I had no idea how exhausting surgery would be and how slowly my body would return to normal.  When I spoke to my doctor about my frustration with how long my recovery was taking, he said “Life grinds at you.  It’s either going to grind you down or polish you up depending upon what you are made of.”

Is life grinding you down?

I spent the next few days thinking about what he’d said.  It made me realize we are all granite.  We are the psychological equivalent of the very stone that is used in modern statuary leaving behind a lasting image and iconry that generations can look up to and contemplate.

In the darkest recesses of our minds, hidden from the place that tells us it is egotistical, don’t we all wish that we were significant? That we mattered?  That somehow we were important?  Our challenge comes when we wait for someone else to tell us the significance.  With just our presence on this earth we have all the material needed.  It is with grace we will find the balance between feeling insignificant and being omnipresent.  We will know we’ve made a difference and there are many life obstacles that will grind away at us.  Each time another comes at us, we need to think of its glorious polishing abilities.  That nothing less than a tough life lesson could bring out the shine of the perfect person that is underneath.

I used to think of these life lessons as rogue waves coming to swallow me up.  In the ocean, a rogue wave occurs when the natural rhythm of the waves gets out of sync.  As a result, instead of waves being equally paced from each other, they move at different rates.  One or more will merge in this phenomenon and as they join, the water of the second wave must join the first.  When this happens on a normal sea, you would feel a bigger harder wave.  When a rogue wave happens during high seas or a storm, you have ship crushing power with waves as high as 100 ft crashing down and devouring all in their path like an enraged beast.

All of us have felt like rogue waves have come into our lives in the form of those events that feel like they would crush us.  But somehow, we survive.  In looking back, we may remember how initially the wave looked impossible to weather.  But those waves were sea water polishing solid granite.

Or is Life Polishing You Up?

When you polish something, the better the reflection & the more you like what you see.  The more you polish, the more clear you will find the reflection which allows you to see without distortion.