This pile of stones in a property facing a river fascinated me. The stones appear as if they were polished to look smooth in multiple of shapes. Each stone has its story of origin, movement, duration of having been in the river bed and offering a shelter for life to survive in the water body. Theirs was a life of movements by the current of water for being shaped. Now they would enter into another role once in the dry land.
Now the individual stones make a pile, creating an appearance of a mass of well finished art work. The river and the river bed gave that formative experience to each stone, which started its rolling journey propelled by the running water of the river. The stones with sharp edges and rough surfaces have become new with different shapes and sizes with a smooth surface!
The sight of this mass of stones created a ripple within me! I too have been moved and formed in life by different situations and events spread over life time. The first cry of an infant at birth is a sign of life ! The first cry is an aspirational announcement that the infant seeks for life to be well lived!
This instinctual first cry is both a physiological event and a life event with a mystical dimension, beyond comprehension!
It is a life event because the first breath creates an integrated respiratory-cardiovascualr- nervous system connection to make life in the body to thrive.
From this initial life event we move on in life across eight stages of life according to the theory of Eric Erickson, a German-American psychoanalyst, who described the passage into life from infancy to being an elder. Each stage is described with a formative process.
The question that surfaced within me as I live in the late seventh decade of my life is, how am I being formed to live generatively to integrate reality and egocentricity of this stage of my life! Knowing that this journey is towards the last breath, there is the gift of opportunity to become rounded and whole ! Some slip into despair and many live vibrantly in the advancing years because they live remembering the first cry which was an aspiration to live life and that too fully and over flowingly.
The pile of stones represented to me the transformation the stones experienced in allowing to be formed by the environment in the flowing river.
Every circumstance is therefore formative and not adversorial!
That gives an affirming and refreshing outlook to life, living and learning!
A senior person whom I met recently, whom I knew from my student days, now ahead of me in his age, said, in a joyful way, 'Each day brings an air of blessing to my soul and God is watching over my life'! What a state of contentment and jubilation!
Most of us would have thought that the destruction of human life and property during the second world war was a formative event to influence human conscience to seek for peace and human brotherhood for generations. But eighty five years later, we see enmity and destruction imposed upon by sound minds upon others in Gaza, Ukraine, and some other places.
When will human lives be lived on earth formatively and altruistically!
I wish human beings will embrace God consciousness to feel loved and made ready to 'love our neighbour as ourselves'
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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