So, in the revelation that there are one or two people who actually do read this stuff that I write, I’ve been requested to explain the stones from the three stones (again) blog - which you can read here.
The first stone is ferrous sulphate. It’s embedded in grey slate and was sitting in my front garden.
It was upside down and I couldn’t see it and for some reason I felt the urge to lift up a piece of slate one day and the ferrous sulphate was underneath.
You’ll know that ferrous sulphate is fool’s gold.
Being an avid fan of Lord of The Rings I immediately thought of the quote “not all that glitters is gold”.
I was also struck by the fact that this piece of beautiful geology was hidden from me until I picked it up and sought to find it.
Not everything that shines is bright and beautiful and honest and true and some of the most beautiful things are quite hard to find.
There is a flat piece of slate from Constantine beach in Cornwall.
I have gone there many times now but most recently with just myself and Callum for a week in the summer of 2021.
I picked two pieces of slate up, one which fits with the other two stones and one which acts as a coaster.
It allows me to stop for a minute and remind myself of a place where I have no phone signal and where I can walk with the sand between my toes and bodyboard with my son in freezing cold water and eat fish and chips.
It’s a ‘port-key’ like Harry Potter. It transports back.
The third stone is more complicated.
In essence the white stone is from the passage in the bible which explains that no man will truly know himself until the very end and what he will find is his true identity, his true self is written on his white stone.
This concept was introduced by Charles Handy, the original business philosopher from the UK, and has been explained much more eloquently than I could in his autobiography.
It reminds me that the journey is long and that the answer only comes at the end and although this sounds like philosophical claptrap, to sit back sometimes in the quiet of my office and look at these stones reminds me about what my values are supposed to be and the direction I’m supposed to be travelling.
Finally, on the desk is a broken toothbrush handle. I wrote about this here a while ago.
In spring of 2020 and in the middle of the pandemic I snapped a toothbrush and really felt that I’d never be able to buy a toothbrush again.
The broken toothbrush handle reminds me of where we had to go, to get to where we are now. Lest we forget.
I hope that explanation helps.
Blog Post Number - 2909