The patience of the rocks...

Embedded for hundreds of millions of years...
waiting to take their place on the beach. 

This morning, I tapped my fingers, slightly impatiently, waiting for the laptop to boot up. It took 57.41 seconds.

Yesterday, I witnessed a "birth". The process had taken 300,000,000 years.

Still waiting...

While exploring the cliffs, I touched a tiny, sparkling piece of quartz, exposed and on the leading edge of the sandstone face. It was loose, and it fell into my hand - free, for the first time, in hundreds of millions of years.

It's strange really, this demand we have for instant gratification, quick answers, and the easy realization of our hopes and dreams...without struggle, significant personal effort, or the passage of time.

I know this very well.

I want to be fit enough to run a marathon again. Now. I'd like to get back to what I weighed when I was 25. Now. I'd like to play the piano like a virtuoso. Now. I'd like the technical skill to climb a difficult mountain. Now. I want the ability to paddle and play in the standing waves of the River Tay. Now.

It makes so little sense to want these things without the willingness to make the patient effort required.

There is wisdom in these ancient red cliffs. They embrace a marvellous diversity of rocks. When erosion and unimaginable time loosen the sandstone's grip, they are free. Now, obedient to gravity, they fall to the ground to become part of the shore we walk upon almost every day.

The old philosopher said, "to everything there is a season." The time that precedes that "season" however, gives we humans opportunity for effort. Effort requires patience.

Released...

...and now washed by the tides and the waves and warmed by the sun.

Some rocks still wait.
Empty depressions remain from others that are free.

I carry in my pocket now, that tiny, sparkling piece of quartz, "birthed" (literally) into my hand. It lay deep within the ancient cliffs, by what is now the North Sea, for hundreds of millions of years.

It reminds me to be patient - with myself, with others, and with everything that is worthy of time and effort. I like what Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:

"Adopt the pace of nature: 

her secret is patience."

A handful of "time".

There's a 10km run coming up here in a few weeks. We've registered...and we're not ready. 

It's time, indeed, for patient effort. That, after all, is what training is all about. And it's usually not easy. :)

Duncan.