"A rolling stone gathers no moss."
Only recently did I give any thought to that proverb, at once finally realizing what it means and that it is all too applicable to my life. I am a rolling stone, never putting forth energy, effort or attention into one project, activity, relationship, what have you, for a long enough period to gather moss. I think my initial reaction to the proverb (without giving any thought to its full & comprehensive meaning) was that moss is an unwanted accumulation (you know, something along the lines of "a rolling stone doesn't pick up...unwanted...scummy covering..." whatever that might have meant had I taken time to deconstruct it.) But no, moss is squishy and soft and moist and slows you down...moss, like roots, means permanence, stability, familiarity, comfort. And I am lacking these things. I am moss-less.
To give this realization a more literal setting: When I got here (and even in my imagination before I came) I took joy in bouncing from one random activity to the next. There are all kinds of potential outings on a given weekend--it's Chicago, after all--but there's also abundant happenings right on campus...and during the week, too. I enjoyed the frivolous galavanting, but after a while I began to feel stretched thin...the last reserves of butter over so much bread. It's hard to build relationships to people when you see them invariably and haven't made any commitment to the group in which you met them...And I realized that while I've certainly "made friends," I am too much of a floater between groups of them to know who to contact first when I want to invite people to something...(particularly if it's a one-person-only-invite...)
So is the answer to all this to let myself stay in one place and gather moss? What if rolling is in my nature? If it's inevitable, forcing myself to stay in one place and build moss will only mean I leave that moss uprooted and hurt when I start downhill again, gathering speed...
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2 comments:
As someone who has accumulated a little moss in my time here, I'd say that it's a rather comforting thing to have.
And I'd say that worrying about aching when that moss is torn off is a rather cheap argument. After all, the hurt will only be because you enjoyed having it rooted there in the first place. It can only be bad if it was very good. You'll never regret caring about the people you care about, even when it hurts to leave them.
That said, I don't know that you should stop rolling if you don't want to stop rolling. It's one thing to want the shade and shelter of some vegetation when you've spent a year and a bit caroming down a hill. That doesn't mean you haven't been spending valuable time gathering that momentum, or that you won't miss the wind whistling by as you sit collecting your covering.
Perhaps you need to roll more than you need moss, and this is just a case of 'the moss is greener'... The nice thing is that you can roll off whenever you want to if you decide that moss is smelly and soggy rather than cool and comfortable.
Sorry. I just like your metaphor, and wanted to play along. I haven't read anything besides this post and the dialogue.
....hmm...would you like to accumulate moss? more probing yet, is the green fuzz worth the good old rolling action?
i don't like settling. i don't like the stale, the old, the comfort. and i'm itching to leave the states...
but that's just me, and that's just right now. [of course, as all things so interestingly are.]
anywho, you'll probably never see this. you have an incredible blog by the way.
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