Observations On A Stone

Today I spent some time doing what I should have done a long time ago. I've been putting off this task for some time, not because it is time consuming or particularly difficult but because I am a procrastinator. The one person out there who waits eagerly for my next blog entry will now be shouting "Writing a new blog entry!" as an answer to this statement, but that is not the task I am speaking of. No, the dreaded task I've been putting off is the downloading of digital pics from the whole summer into their appropriate files on my computer. Putting them in the topic specific file folders, (camping, sports, family, etc.) is not a task that I particularly enjoy, but there you go. While doing this I had the radio on in the background and there was a story about some kid who was 'well rounded' and this of course got me thinking.

This past summer we spent time camping and the kids collected all kinds of 'keepsakes' from the beach and the woods and where ever else they happened to be. In their collection of rocks there was the usual assortment of nicely smoothed stones that had obliviously been worn and shaped by the action of wind and waves. They often had some neat colours and shapes but all had the same thing in common, they were uniformly smooth. Then there were some other stones which were oddly shaped, cracked or broken, and had holes or depressions or pieces missing. While the smooth stones were neat in their uniformity of shape, the irregular shaped ones were infinitely more interesting. The kids were interested in the smooth stones but spent more time inspecting and speculating about the rough ones.

Why is it then that we use the phrase 'well rounded' to describe people? It seems to me that people are like the stones that my kids collected this summer. They come in all shapes and sizes, colours and textures, but the people with some rough edges are, to me anyway, more interesting. If we were all like those smooth stones that my kids looked at what a boring world it would be. So call me a diamond in the rough or whatever else you might like, but please don't call me well rounded. I'd like to at least think I'm more interesting than that.