What the River Told the Stone

In the middle of a mountain river there sat a great grey stone, and the great grey stone was very proud.

"I am the strongest thing in this whole valley," said the stone. "The trees bend in the wind, but I do not bend. The banks crumble in the rain, but I do not crumble. Even the river — listen to it, rushing and fussing — even the river must split itself in two and go around me. I am the one who stands. I am the one who stays."

And it was true that the river split around the stone. It came down cold and bright from the high places, and when it reached the great grey stone it parted, and ran past on either side, foaming and murmuring, and joined itself again below.

"You think you have won," said the stone to the river, "but you are only running away from me. I do not move for anyone."

The river did not argue. The river never argued. It only ran on, the way it always had, saying its long soft word over and over, and the stone could not tell whether the word was meant for him, or whether the river was simply talking to itself.

"Why do you keep coming?" the stone asked at last. "Day after day, night after night, you throw yourself against me, and every time you must turn aside. Are you not tired of losing?"

"I am not losing," said the river, gently. "And I am not throwing myself against you. I am only going where I am going. You happen to be in the way, so I go around. It is no trouble to me at all."

"It is no trouble," the stone scoffed, "because I am the stronger. The strong stand firm. The weak must yield and flow around. Everyone knows this."

"Perhaps," said the river, and ran on.

So the seasons turned. In summer the river ran low and lazy, and barely seemed to touch the stone at all. In spring it ran high and full and cold, swollen with the melting snow, and it pushed against the stone with all its weight — but still the stone did not move, and still the river simply parted and went around.

"You see?" said the stone each spring. "Even at your strongest, you cannot move me."

"I am not trying to move you," said the river each spring. And ran on.

Years passed. Then more years. The trees that had been saplings grew tall and dropped their seeds and the seeds grew into more trees. Old birds died and new birds sang. And all the while the river ran past the great grey stone, parting and joining, parting and joining, murmuring its long soft word.

And a strange thing began to happen, so slowly that the stone himself did not notice.

Where the water ran against him, the stone grew smooth. The sharp proud edges he had once had — the jagged corners he had been so pleased with — grew rounded and gentle under the endless soft touch of the river. And little by little, grain by grain, so small that no single day could show it, the stone grew smaller.

A hundred years went by. The great grey stone was great no longer. He was a smooth round pebble now, small enough to hold in a child's hand, sitting in the middle of the same river, in the same valley, beneath the same wide sky.

And at last the stone understood.

"River," he said, and his voice was very quiet now, worn soft like the rest of him. "All this time I thought I was the strong one, because I stood firm and you turned aside. But it was you who changed me, grain by grain, and I never changed you at all. How can that be? You are so soft. You yield to everything. You went around me a hundred years."

The river ran on, the way it always had. And then it answered, in its long soft word.

"I never had to be hard to be strong," said the river. "I yielded to you, and to every stone and bank and bend in my whole long way down the mountain. I never once stood firm. And yet here I still am, running bright and cold and full, exactly as I always was. While you, who would not bend, who would not yield, who would not move for anyone — look how the yielding water has carried most of you away to the sea."

The little pebble said nothing for a while. He was not sad, exactly. He felt lighter than he had in a hundred years, as if all the proud hard heaviness had been worn off him and only the smooth true smallness was left.

"Then I was wrong," he said. "Standing firm is not the same as being strong."

"No," said the river kindly. "And yielding is not the same as being defeated. The willow bends in the storm and stands in the morning. The oak that will not bend lies broken. I bend around everything, and I reach the sea. There is a strength in softness that the hard things never learn — until the soft things, gently, over a long time, teach it to them."

And the little round pebble sat in the bright water, smooth and content, and let the river run over him. He did not try to split it anymore. He did not try to stand against it. He simply rested where he was, and felt the cool water pass, and listened, at last, to the long soft word the river had been saying all along.