studying stones

once upon a time there was a stone who lived in the bottom of the sea.

it was not a great stone, nor was it plain, just an ordinary stone who lived among several million other ordinary stones.

there was a day that came and the stone noticed something in the water overhead. it had long protrusions that flapped about as it sped by.

“What is that thing?” it pondered.

it spent many days thinking about the thing until it came by a second time.

it dove down the the sea floor and looked around with one big eye. with one of the protrusions it reached out and picked up several of the stones before it left again.

“What IS that thing?” the stone yelled out loud.
“Its a human. They live on the land.” sighed a sea crab.
“Whats land?”
“Its where here stops. Over there about three days walk.” said the crab.

this was amazing to the stone. it had never heard of land before, it had to see. So without any thought it began its journey to the land.

being as it was a stone at the bottom of the sea, it took considerably longer than three days to make it to land. t had no feet nor legs to stand on and by force of will alone it was able to roll itself over and over for nearly fifteen years until the day came when it could feel the warm sun on its surface and the dry sand of land.

it basked in the light and felt the greatest joy it ever felt in its entire life.

“Land is my destination! I love land! I will stay here for the rest of my days!”

without warning or reason a human appeared and picked up the stone. it tossed it in the air a few times and then flung the stone as far as it could back into the sea…

“Why?” the stone cried.
“Why did it do that?”

no matter what our goal sets before us, no matter how hard we strive, in the end we will never know the true joy of achieving our goals as long as there are those who will toss us away…