The Not-swearing-before-lunch-club

by Andrew Smith

Me and my pal, Mike, was over in the mountains the other day, working.

I like it over there, but we'd been there a few days already and I was tired, dehydrated, sore and cranky. I'm about always cranky, so maybe that doesn't count, but the sore and tired made it worse. On second thought, I'm about always sore and tired too, so maybe it was just things-as-usual.

So, I salted my language fairly liberally, as if that would let the crankiness out somehow. I cussed until even the sky turned blue. And it hasn't gone back yet, if I'm not mistaken.

My pal asked me if I felt any better afterward and I said that it was a good thing swearing didn't make a guy feel better, or there would be no end of it, ever. Then I confessed that sometimes I used just a tad bit too much profanity even for my own tastes, but it was a hard habit to break. My pal agreed with that, but said he tried not to cuss before lunch anyway. He was a member of the Not-swearing-before-lunch-club, he said, and he asked me right then if I'd like to join.

Well, I thought it over, and it seemed like a great organization to me. I mean, a man can hardly be expected to give up swearing altogether, all at once, just like that. But not-swearing-before-lunch, well that seemed possible to me. Things don't really go to Hell till after lunch anyway, I figured. So there was usually nothing worth swearing about before lunch. I could do it.

And once I had that down, I figured I could expand on it anytime I wanted. I could stretch it to not-swearing-before-dinner, then to not-swearing-before-bedtime. And that would be close enough for me. So I joined.

I headed down the other side of the ridge. The terrain was sore-foot rough and it was hot and windy, and I kneeled on a pad of cactus by mistake.

I would have cussed, but of course I had my club reputation to think about now, so I didn't. I just kept walking. But I started wondering just how far this not-swearing went, and how I might get out of it now and again. Did it count if I swore inside my brain without actually saying the words? Or what if I said the words under my breath? Or what if I yelled them at the top of my lungs, but there was no one around to hear them? Or, what if I swore out of happiness? Would that count?

I continued zig-zagging tiredly down the ridge. It was mostly composed of a huge piece of smooth granite. There was a white quartz vein in it, about two inches wide, that ran through it for hundreds of yards. As I walked I saw there was a small boulder, not bigger than a beachball, sitting right atop the vein of white quartz. Then I noticed that the vein of white quartz ran right through the boulder too, and that the veins of quartz in the boulder, and in the parent rock, were perfectly aligned.

Odd, I thought.

It took a moment before I realized what I was seeing. The mountain, over numberless thousands of years, had eroded away in the dry wind and left that small boulder behind. And the boulder, not bigger than a beachball, had not moved a millimeter since it was made.

There, right in the midst of the rank disorder of the world stood a stone unmoved since the beginning of time. Through countless eons it had existed, perfectly still, in the spot where it was born.

Of course, being human, my first impulse was to go over and move it. I could easily have rolled it from it's birthplace with a gentle push of my foot. But I did not. Instead, a feeling of stillness descended upon me. I, sore and grouchy, and forever wandering the world seeking a tranquility I can't find, was suddenly confronted with the deep, uncaring tranquility of nature.

Something beyond understanding. A peace that guides the atoms, that lets waves fall on the beach and stones sit still forever. A peace that's innate in nature; in everything, everywhere, always present. I left the stone sitting untouched for the wind to wear away. It'll take centuries I guess, thousands of them.

Meanwhile, I didn't even make it to ten-thirty without cussing. But I haven't given up. After all, tomorrow's a brand new day; unbent, unscratched, undented.

And there's something about that stone, that single unmoved stone amidst all the jumbled chaos of a mountainside, that tells me a perfect world may not be as far away as we think.