Stones

Last week was a difficult one for my family. Two of my cousin's lost their fathers, my dad had his first operation post-heart attack which I was not able to be there for, and our childhood cat passed away. It seemed that everyone I spoke to was really having a tough time and there was nothing I could do but grieve with them.

I read this article in the Financial Times weekend, (it has become my must-read weekend paper) and it really made an impact.

The concept came from teachers who needed to find a way to help young children deal with grief. The idea is for the child to have a way to easily express how they are feeling that day. The child is given two stones, one smooth and one rough. Each day the child must put one stone on the teacher's desk, the smooth one if they are having an OK day, the rough one if they are not feeling well. If the teacher sees the smooth stone, they are able to go about their day and deal with the child equally, if the teacher receives the rough stone, they know to go a bit easy on the
child, and give them extra hugs and attention. Both options give the child a way to easily check in with themselves and express their emotions.

The author of the article thought this technique would be extremely helpful for adults as well and explained the scenario where she was out to dinner with a friend, and the friend seemed kind of distant. The author spent the entire dinner trying to figure out what she did to make the friend act that way and came to the conclusion, after much energy, that the friend was simply having a bad day. The author asks, "wouldn't it have been easier that at the start of the dinner, my friend just put down a rough stone?" She explains that she could have hugged her friend and just simply comforted her.

It sounds so simple, and so lovely to me. We all go about our days, having to put whatever might be going on in our emotions aside and sometimes not spending any time at all figuring out how we are feeling.

Sometimes it is good to just get away from stress and emotion and 'get on' with the day. Other times, it affects everything and it is not always easy to tell all whom you encounter that you are having a tough time nor do you always want to talk about or know what the issue is.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a way to simply say, go easy on me. And wouldn't it be lovely to simply be able to do that for those you encountered.