The Stone, the Dash, and the Mundane

Hammer the stone.

The tombstone dash - of life, of the day.

Find deep joy in the mundane.

There is a quote by Jacob Riis: “When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow, it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

I first heard this reference when I was reading about Gregg Popovich and his training mentality that success in sports and in life is the result of disciplined, persistent effort. I love that quote and the idea of hammering a stone, working and waiting for the crack to grow and reveal success greater than anything we could have imagined. That is a treasure. The gifts we receive when we show up and continue to show up and do the work day after day.

There is a poem by Linda Ellis called, “The Dash.” A reference to the line on a tombstone between the date of one’s birth and one's death. One line reads, “What matters is how we live and love, and how we spend our dash.” I think this relates to the stone in that we must continue to live each day working on the things that matter—doing the work of living and loving. And this is not easy work. It takes disciplined, persistent effort to live and to love well.

Ellis’s poem ends with these lines. “Be less quick to anger and show appreciation more, and love the people in our lives like we’ve never loved before. If we treat each other with respect and more often wear a smile, remembering that this special dash might only last a little while. So, when your eulogy is being read with your life’s actions to rehash, would you be proud of what they say about how you spent your dash?”

Our days and moments may often feel mundane, but this is where life and love live. In those mundane moments. In the dash as we hammer the stone, living our lives, doing the work.

May we live our dash well. The dash of the day and the dash of our lives. May we see the beauty in those seemingly mundane moments, because when we trust and hammer away, deep joy has a way to seek us out and find us.