“The difference between a boulder and a pebble is perspective.  The rock may be a pebble to a human however, the same rock is a boulder from the perspective of an ant.”  This is one of my “deep thoughts” contained in an old file I found in a folder I created a couple years before I retired.  

Prior to retiring, I knew I wanted to do some writing. The question was, what should I write about?  Coming up with topics was not my concern.  The question for me was about the underlying purpose of my writing. It actually took months to figure it out.  Admittedly my success in meeting my purpose has been mixed. For the record: I want my writing to be about multiple perspectives on any given topic.    

Physically, a rock is what it is. It is the size and the weight it is.  A rock exists where and how it exists.  However, whether that rock is a pebble or a boulder depends on your point of view.  

We might think about the rock as being big, heavy, small, light, pretty, colorful, dull, shiny, interesting, helpful, harmful, calming, valuable, worthless, exciting, unique and the like. However, the actual rock is just a rock. All of these other attributes are more about our perspective than they are about the rock.   

The symbolism of a rock on an engagement / wedding ring includes love and signals the wearer is committed to another.  The inference of that rock includes the idea that this person is or will be legally hitched to another for purposes of things like healthcare coverage. 

A diamond on a wedding ring might cost several thousands of dollars but cubic zirconium engagement rings cost less than fifty dollars on Amazon. Pretty much only experts closely examining the rock can tell the difference between the diamond rock and the rock made out of cubic zirconia. 

The point here is not about marriage, diamonds or pebbles or boulders.  My actual point is that the rock is what it is, yet, most often, our perception of the rock is about what it represents.  This concept is true of most things we interact with.  It is not the actual thing which is important, rather most often, importance is about what the thing represents.  

The boulder represents a substantial object and a pebble something one just steps on or over.  A diamond represents commitment and love. Does a much less expensive rock which looks very much like a diamond represent less love or less commitment?

My dad was a stonemason.  I saw him on many occasions hold a field stone in one hand, spin it around until he lined up the grain of the stone.  He would then hit the stone firmly once or twice with a large hammer and the stone would spit in half. At the age of like nine or ten I would pound on a stone dozens of times and never even come close to making even a mark, let alone splitting it. 

Dad passed away when I was eighteen. Periodically over the years I run across some of the stone work he did.  Once we stopped at a garage sale and the house had a split fieldstone front which was my dad’s work. There is still a small section of his work on Rosedale mall. If you know where to look, you will see some of his work on the U of MN campus mall which is one of the reasons I love the U of MN campus so much.   To me these rocks mean something very different than I would guess they do for most other people.  Depending on your perspective a rock is not just a rock.

In Minnesota the prevailing winds blow from the northwest to the south east.  Which means, quite often, the east / southeast shore of a lake will be sandy. As an aside, the west / northwest shore is most often not sandy.  The wind causes waves to crash on the east shore and the crashing waves push the rocks against each other.  Very slowly the rocks hitting each other, grinds the rocks into sand. Each grain of sand is a small rock chipped off a bigger rock.

Natural diamonds take millions of years to form. Cubic zirconium takes several days to create. Sand is created over many hundreds of thousands of years. Actually, any given grain of sand is not only older than you are, it was probably created prior to the existence of the human race. 

A grain of sand might well be a boulder from the perspective of microscopic organisms and yet from the perspective of an ant it is just something they step over or on.  For humans the sand might be a beautiful beach or something to be swept off our floors.  Sand is what it is but what we think about the sand depends on your perspective. 

In our living room sitting in front of our fireplace is a stone cut into the shape of a heart.  It was cut by my father probably sixty to seventy years ago for a neighbor.  Several years ago when that neighbor was moving into a senior care facility out west where her kids live, she left it on our doorstep with a note that she wanted me to have it.  It is just a rock but my gosh it is certainly not just a rock to me.

This post uses rocks as a tool to discuss perspectives. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the obvious. From the perspective of a rock, for a very short period during their existence, humans interacted with them and in the giant scheme of things, that interaction was probably not very significant.  

The closer you look the more you see. 

Once in a while, out to dinner at a “nice” place, I will order a Margarita. More precisely, far less than half of the time, when we go out to a nice place to have dinner, which is not that often, I’ll have an alcoholic drink. I just don’t drink much.

Probably, I average around a dozen or so adult beverages spread out over a year. Not evenly spaced, one month I might have a couple adult beverages, not in the same night of course, and then not have another for several months. On average, I just don’t drink much.

As a kid, I was allowed sips of what the adults around me were having. From then until this day, in my opinion, wine and beer taste bad. Yes’ I’ve tasted both beer and wine over the years since then and they are just as foul tasting as they were when I was a kid.

Linda would just love it if I liked wine. Admittedly, it would be lovely to share wine with her. Yet, to me, wine tastes bitter and beer tastes worse. Not liking the taste is not the only reason I don’t drink much.

On June 1, 1973 the legal drinking age in Minnesota was lowered from 21 to 18. I was, at the time, nineteen, working as a pizza cook at Cicero’s Pizza in Har Mar Mall. Several of my coworkers and myself were suddenly legal, we would go across the parking lot to the Ground Round for a drink after work.

I would order a whiskey and seven-up. After hours in front of a pizza oven I would be thirsty, pretty much I just drank that whiskey-seven down. There was conversation, fun, stories were told, I’d order another. Having a good time and I would order another. Repeat. They closed at 1:00 am.

One night, I decided to put the stir sticks from my drinks into my shirt pocket. The next morning I had like seven stir sticks in my pocket. I would have told you I had three drinks, not seven.

Maybe somebody put a couple extra stir sticks in my pocket, so I repeated this experiment several times. We only drank from 11:30 to 1:00 AM, an hour and a half. I was drinking something like one drink every fifteen – twenty minutes. Consistently I had a couple more stir sticks than I had intended to have drinks.

In my head, the lesson of the stir sticks was about me lacking the self control to limit my drinking. Two drinks in an hour and a half might be reasonable. Consistently drinking two or three times that and not realizing you had, is not something to be proud of.

By nineteen I’d seen some young men do bad stuff while drunk. As I’ve aged I’ve come to know people, men and women, of all ages often do bad things while drunk. My guess is almost every adult personally has seen bad stuff happen resulting from a person being drunk.

Here I am, fifty plus years later. I never quit drinking altogether. I have been drunk a couple times over the decades but only a couple. For example, on a four day trip to Mexico like thirty-five years ago, I drank a lot. There is no way I would have joined the conga line at Senor Frogs if I wasn’t drunk. However the bottom line is, I don’t drink much.

I was nineteen when I decided not to drink much. Whether or not I would have become an alcoholic had I not decided to not drink much is sort of academic at this point. Yet, I do not regret my decision to voluntarily not to drink much.

That said, I’ve never had a drinking buddy let alone a group of drinking buddies. Contacting some guys to meet at a bar is something I’ve never done. Going to a bar to watch a game is just not on my radar. I’ve never hung out at a VFW or the like. No bartender has ever asked me if I want my usual.

I did go to “office get togethers” at bars. I’d order a mixed drink, and if others were having multiple drinks, I made it a Sprite or ginger ale. Me not drinking more than one was often noted but, I think, in a positive way, as me being someone being under control.

Those of us who don’t drink much notice there are lots of opportunities to drink: bars, restaurants, music venues, sports venues, breweries, wineries, distilleries and the like. Most every town has at least one bar. Book clubs, softball leagues, reunions, family gatherings and so much more all include a drinking component. Drinking is a big part of our economy and actually also our social fabric.

We all make choices in our lives. Not drinking much is a choice I made long ago. Sometimes I think if I would have drank more, my life would have been a bit more fun. Drinking lowers some inhibitions and sometimes a little less inhibition is a good thing.

I wish there was an easier, maybe more convenient way to spend time with buddies just chatting about whatever, which did not include drinking. Did I mention I don’t like coffee either. Although, lately I’ve been going out to breakfast with a buddy here and there. So there is hope for social contact without drinking.

Over the years, I occasionally get tempted to go to a bar, order a whiskey and seven while I tell tales of all of the brave and brilliant things I’ve done. Everyone would laugh at the clever way I told stories and jokes. It might be fun.

Ever notice the tales told by sober people somehow are a bit less funny, brave or brilliant. That describes me pretty well. A bit less funny, brave or brilliant.

The closer you look the more you see.