I admit I’m probably too romantic, given my tough past. But yesterday, walking along the beach near my cabin, I couldn’t help but notice, not the endless wave-driven layers of pebbles covering the sand, but the variety of pebbles in the collage. Millions of pebbles. No, more like hundreds of millions.

Our lake is unique. Lake Winnipeg has been ripped from the landscape by Ice Age Lake Agassiz. It left a considerable depression in the prairie, making it the third largest freshwater lake in Canada and the eleventh largest in the world. But Lake Winnipeg sits right along the dividing line between the limestone rubble and bedrock of Manitoba/Saskatchewan and the Precambrian granite shield of Ontario. Thus, on the sandy beaches of this lake we find an eclectic mix of pure quartz, feldspar, mica, slate, schist, granite and limestone (fossils included). Each type of rock has a different density than the other and different faults, strengths, cracks or fissures.

I picked up stone after stone for almost an hour, examining these rock fragments that had been lashed by the same water, the same ice, and the same wind and rain as every other pebble on the shore. None was the same as the next. North, I hoped they were the same. However, I couldn’t help but marvel at two things: 1) how supposedly the same elements, in the same environment, could be so uniquely different and 2) how we generally look along these lake shores and see sand, rock, or water. , like a conglomerate. , but fail to appreciate the differences in each granule, and the beauty in individualism.

As hard as the rocks are, they are eventually shaped into something special and different. However, as fragile as humans are, we expect everyone to think like us, agree with us, and conform to our standards and beliefs, regardless of their background, the blows they’ve suffered in life, and how hard or special weakness. We expect others to be us, but we resent that they usurp our special place in the world.

Anyone in a medium-sized family can attest to the truth that no two children, even those born as identical twins, end up exactly alike. That’s because there are nuances in the way they experience life, the way they are treated and the information they absorb.

Do not you believe it? Go into your living room and take a photo. Now go to the other side of that room and grab another one. Upload them to your computer and browse through them. Do you see exactly the same thing in every image, or is everything seen from a different perspective?

The problem with each of us is that, no matter how close we are to another, we each hear and see the world from that specific point of view. An identical twin talking to her mother in the kitchen may not be heard by her sister in the next room, or the mother’s response may be missing in a key inflection of voice, or in the accompanying nuanced hand gesture. to a comment. So now that twin has a unique experience that uniquely impacts that person. It’s the proverbial Chinese cliché about the flapping of a butterfly’s wings. Everything since then has been altered, regardless of how small the change.

In our own lives, realizing that the impact of minor adjustments to experience is critical to finding our oasis in life. We must all seek, not our neighbor’s dream, but our own. We are special. We are unique. We have ideals and aspirations that we may not yet fully understand. But trying to mirror your friends’ supposed successes is just inviting discouragement, when you discover that it’s not as satisfying for you as it seems to be for someone else.

Your co-worker has a Lexus. So you must also need one to be happy. His doctor is on vacation in St Kitts. So you too must go there to be successful. You read about this exciting life living in the Far East, so you leave, only to find that you feel lonely and discouraged, because your family and friends are more important to your enjoyment than you thought.

You are but a pebble on a remote beach. I am also nothing else. But, for me, that is more than enough, because I have learned that, being a pebble, I am unique, individual, wonderful and irreplaceable. You too!