Help finding a comment about interesting-looking stones?
July 5, 2023 3:12 AM

I've been looking for an AskMetafilter comment which went something like: "It's ok to just wander down the path of life turning over interesting stones that you see". I think it was a response to a question worrying about lack of ambition, or aging, or career, or what you feel you 'should' do in life, something like that. It's from recent years (probably last 1-2, max 5 years) - I have checked my favourites and searched/Google searched to no avail. I've looked for variations like stones/pebbles, turning over/looking under, etc. The sentiment has really stuck with me and I would like to find the original wording. Hoping perhaps this might jog someone's memory?!
posted by atlantica to Grab Bag (6 answers total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
I can't help with that quote but in the book Psalm for the Wild-Built there's this similar sentiment.

"You're an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You're an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. the world simply is."

Out of context that looks nihilistic but it's still true and still beautiful. Our purpose is to be, and what we do in the mean time is up to us.
posted by Awfki at 4:53 AM on July 5, 2023


We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. Joseph Campbell
Not your comment but sort of the same idea.
posted by JohnR at 7:00 AM on July 5, 2023


Adjacent? I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Attrib to Newton in Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855) by Sir David Brewster
posted by BobTheScientist at 7:10 AM on July 5, 2023




This sounds a bit like a quote attributed to Isaac Newton, down to the metaphor of stones or pebbles: 'I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.'
posted by plep at 2:43 AM on July 6, 2023


Oh hey, I made the first comment at the top of that question linked by adekliny. What a walk down memory lane! FWIW I'm still ok wandering down the path of life turning over interesting stones that I see (even though I used my stone-turning metaphor a bit differently, and I still oscillate wildly in my desire for this and the other way of lovingly tending a garden for years at a time). Alas, life is short and I'm using mine like I only get one of these. So, for now, flipping stones it is!

Also +1 for the Wild-Built reference. That book is an extended rumination on this question, and is something I read while I was in the process of the nation-hop that was yet to pass when I responded to that previous question (and is, today, old and settled news... because I'm enjoying the heck out of this particular national stone-flip).
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 7:16 AM on July 7, 2023


« Older Cleaningfilter   |   It Sweats More Than Me! Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.