Pebbles

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who liked rocks. Igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic—she liked them all. She liked them so much that she collected them. When she went to the store, she would buy quartz slides and carved obsidian. Every time she would go for a walk, she would return with pockets full of stones—river pebbles, bits of shale, and little white rocks. If it was a rock, she would try to take it home with her.

And that was the funny thing about the girl. She really did like every kind of rock, from the tiny emerald chip that had fallen out of her grandmother’s ring to the rough lumps she would find by the train tracks. She would clean and polish each one carefully and put it in its own special place on her collecting shelves.

Sometimes, people would make fun of the little girl. They told her that it didn’t make any sense to collect boring pebbles from the side of the road. They told her that she should only focus on the most exciting rocks, the shiny gems and the sleek rare minerals.

The little girl didn’t listen. She just kept collecting her rocks, no matter what kind they were, and no matter if she already had a dozen others just like it. To the little girl, each one was special.

When the little girl grew up, she became a geologist. She went all over the world, traveling from deserts to canyons to beaches, examining her beloved rocks. And when she got a little too old to kneel in cold mud, she became a geology professor. She taught each of the students about rocks, and she taught all of them to love stones as much as she did.

On the last day of class, she would give each student a hug, a rock from her now vast collection, and a little index card that said:

Just as every stone is special, so are you. Just as each rock is different, so are you. And just as each pebble is important—so are you.

And even if not all her students went on to become geologists, or even teachers, they never forgot what she said, and they remembered to love each and every rock. But most importantly, they remembered to love themselves for themselves, and that’s the best lesson of all.