Sand

At the beach the other morning, Viv read me a passage from one of her books about the formation of sand. It sounds boring, unless you’re an aspiring paleontologist/archaeologist/geologist like Viv, but it was actually a beautiful metaphor. While I always thought sand formed from rocks in a given area, the book noted that sand is actually formed from the grinding of rocks all across the globe, especially in glaciers that freeze and bust. Over millions of years, the shards are churned into spherical balls that eventually make their way to the beaches and lakes, where they’re mixed and eventually make the homogenous mixture I get to lay on as I fry my body. It seems that as I lurch toward graduation and The Great Unknown of my future, everything has turned into a metaphor. This passage about sand, too, has fallen victim to my figurative mind. As my friends and I are broken apart by the wind and rain called Time (more accurately called “jobs” and “plans”), it can be scary to wonder what’s next for all of us. It’s obvious that things will never be the same; life is beautiful in that it’s ever-changing. Just as the shards of rocks can never be melded back together, I’ll never live in this little commune called “undergrad college” again. Still, how exciting to think that we’re just as complicated and meticulous as sand: that we have the ability to stream across the world and land somewhere new, that we can refine our edges through time and experience, that we can become as beautiful as a whole dang beach when we’re banded together.