A Quick Read On An Unexpected Strategy To Resolving Restless Problems

Emily Steele
2 min readMay 25, 2022

A couple weeks ago, I was riding my bike along the river when I noticed a word spelled out in rocks on the riverbank. The rock-spelled word was laid out such that a person standing on the opposite bank could read it.

It reminded me of the giant messages beachgoers leave in the sand for balcony-onlookers to read from afar.

Photo by Ashley Whitlatch on Unsplash

As I pedaled past it, I tried to decipher what the Word In The Rocks was, but it looked mostly like a series of odd geometric shapes from my view.

I rode along and decided it was probably only legible from far away.

Weeks have passed since, but something about that illegible riverbank rock-word stayed with me.

How many other things in life are best understood from a distance?

How often am I too close to something to really understand it?

When could a shift in perspective help something become clearer?

With my relationships, my work, my family, current events — I often feel frustrated by my lack of understanding, and my gut reaction is to blame the “thing.”

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Emily Steele

lifter of heavy things: thoughts, words, weights, burdensome beliefs