The Man Who Carried Stone: Bedtime Story

Hello loves.

Join me tonight for story time. Tonight's story is a story about carrying blame and resentment and the heaviness of it.

Can you let go and move forward lighter?

Sleep well, dear ones.

Music generously provided by Sakartvelo.

Transcript

Hello dear ones and welcome to today's bedtime story. The man who carried stones. So just taking a few moments to settle yourself into this space. Maybe taking some deeper inhales and exhales. Stretching out your body. In a region of red-earthed hills and olive groves. There lived a man named Erastos, Who had not spoken to his brother in seventeen years. The quarrel that had started this silence was like most quarrels that harden into seventeen years of stone. Not entirely simple to explain. There had been a dispute over land. Their father's land. Which had been divided in a way that Aristos believed was unjust. There had been words spoken at the graveside. Words that had turned the air cold. There had been a document, A will. Which Erastos' brother, Petros, Had filled in a way that benefited himself. And there had been the look on Petros' face. A look that Erastos had interpreted as contempt. Though Petros himself might not have known it was there. These things had calcified. They had become the shape of Erastos' interior world. He was a man of genuine warmth with his friends, A good father to his three children. A diligent keeper of his olive groves. But inside. In the chamber where his brother lives. There was only cold stone. And the low fire of old grievance. He was not unusual in this. The hills were full of men and women carrying such stones. The weight of them showed in certain ways. In the set of the jaw. In the flatness behind the eyes when a particular name was mentioned. In the slight stoop of the shoulders, In men still young enough to stand straight. Carrying stones does that to a body. Eventually. You begin to bend. Erastos bent slowly. You did not notice it at first. He was too busy being right. Being right is a full-time occupation. It requires constant maintenance. You must remember the exact sequence of events that proved you were right and the other party wrong. You must rehearse them in quiet moments. In the hour before sleep. In the middle of the night when the dogs bark and you cannot return to dreams. You must be ready at any moment to produce the full case should anyone ask. For seventeen years no one asked. His wife had stopped asking. His children had never known their uncle. And Petrus, For his part, Seemed to have made a similar piece with the silence. Having, Perhaps, His own version of events rehearsed in his own chest. In the 39th year of his life. Erastos' eldest daughter announced that she would marry a man from the other side of the valley. The wedding would be held at the bride's family home. Which meant that Erastos would have to host. And hosting in that tradition meant inviting all family. And all family meant petros. Erastos said nothing when his daughter told him this. He went to his olive grove and worked for three hours in the afternoon heat. Longer than was reasonable. And came home red-faced and silent. His wife watched him from the kitchen window and said nothing either. She had learned the geography of his silences long ago. Three days later, Still without having sent the invitation. Erastos went to the market in town at the foot of the hills. It was a long walk, Two hours each way, And he usually took the donkey. But that morning the donkey had gone lame, And so he walked. Coming back up the road in the early afternoon, Carrying more than was comfortable. He encountered an old woman sitting on a flat stone at the side of the path. She was very old. The kind of old that seems to have compressed several lifetimes into one body. She had a small fire going, Though the day was warm. And she was looking into it with an expression of complete absorption. Sit, She said, Without looking up. He almost didn't, But his back hurt and the bag was heavy. And the stone she sat on was large enough for two. He sat. They were quiet for a while. The fire crackled. A bird called from the olive trees up the slopes. What are you carrying? She asked. He almost said, Olives, Oil, Some dried fish. But that was not what she meant. And he knew it immediately. With the particular discomfort of being seen when you have been invisible to yourself for a long time. An old argument, He said, After a moment. She nodded as if this were entirely expected. Old arguments are the heaviest kind, " she said. They have had time to grow dense. I will tell you a story, She said. About two farmers who shared a boundary wall. One day, A portion of the wall collapsed. And the stone from the wall fell onto the field of one farmer. And he believed it was the other farmer's fault and the other farmer's responsibility to remove it. The second farmer disagreed. The stone sat on the boundary between their fields for a season, And then two seasons, And then several years. Erastos nodded. He had heard variations of this story. He knew where it was going. That the old woman surprised him. The stone, She said, Was not the problem. Stones fall. Walls crumble. That is just what stone does. The problem was that each farmer, In order to reach the field on the other side of the fallen wall, Had to walk around the stone. Every morning and every evening, They each added many steps to their day. In 20 years, The steps they added up to were the equivalent of walking to the sea and back. She looked at him now. The stone did not move its sound. The stone was indifferent to them both. But it occupied the centre of their lives, As surely as if it were a living thing. Erastus looked at the fire. The stone in your chest, " she said quietly. Is not your brother. Your brother is a man somewhere, Doing what men do. Living his days. Perhaps carrying his own stone. The stone in your chest is the story you tell about what he did and what it means. That stone was built from the materials of the past. But it lives in you. Now. Today. And you walk around it every morning and every evening. And you have done so for how long? 17 years, Erastos said. She made a small sound. The steps you have added to your days, She said, In walking around that stone. Imagine what you might have done with them. He went home and wrote the invitation that night. His hand shook a little while he wrote it. Not because he was afraid of Petros. But because he was afraid of himself. Afraid of what would happen inside him when he saw his brother's face. Whether the old rehearsed grievance would rise up and take over. Whether all his careful resolving would crack open like thin ice. The invitation was simple. It said only, Your niece is to be married. You are her family. Please come. He sent it with a neighbor who was going to the other side of the hills. Petros arrived the morning before the wedding, Having walked since dawn. He was thinner than Aristotle remembered. His hair had gone grey at the temples. He stood at the gate of the property looking uncertain. Which was an expression Erastos had never seen on his brother's face before. In his memory, Petros had always been certain, Assured. But the man at the gate looked like someone who had rehearsed a speech many times, And was now not sure any of it was right. Erastos' daughter ran out first, Throwing her arms around her uncle in a way that made both men stop and watch. Because she had never met him before. And yet she embraced him as if she already knew the shape of him. Children who have been told family stories, Sometimes love the people in those stories even before they have stood in the same room with them. Erastos walked through the gate. He and Petros looked at each other for a long moment. I'm sorry, Petrosand. For the well. I handled it wrongly. After 17 years of imagining this conversation. The words were smaller than Erastos had expected. But small words, Sincerely offered. Are sometimes the most that is needed to begin a thaw. That evening the two brothers sat at the table after the meal. The rest of the family gradually drifting to other rooms. Leaving them in the quiet with two cups of wine and the low oil lamp. They talked until very late. It was not easy. There were places where the old grievance rose up and had to be acknowledged. Where things had to be named that were uncomfortable. Petros said things that were hard to hear. Erastos said things he had not planned to say. Some of them were true. And some of them were less true than he had thought. And the sorting them from each other was slow work. Later in his life, Erastos would tell his children and grandchildren what he had learned from those 17 years of carrying stones. He would say. Forgiveness is not a gift you give to the person who wronged you. It is a gift you give to yourself. It is the act of putting down a weight that was never yours to carry in the first place. The hurt was real. The wrongdoing was real. You do not have to call them otherwise. But the stone you built from them. The thing you kept turning over in your chest to keep the grievance alive and polished. That stone is yours. You made it. And you can choose to set it down. You would say forgiving is not the same as forgetting. That you can say clearly that what was done was wrong and harmful. And you can also choose to stop letting it occupy the centre of your interior landscape. Both things can be true. He would also say, The steps you save when you stop walking around the stone. And take you somewhere you have never been. Somewhere that exists only in the present. In the life that is actually happening now. Rather than in the past where the argument lives. He lived into his eighties. He and Petros were never the brothers they might have been if there had been no quarrel. That they were weapons. They sat at each other's tables. They attended each other's griefs. The boundary wall between their properties was never rebuilt. And the gap it left became, Over time, A path well worn by the going back and forth of family.