Ripples

One pebble tossed into the center of a still pond can turn its smooth, glasslike surface into a mess of ripples.

No, that's not quite right, is it? It's not a mess of ripples at all. There's nothing messy about it. It's just a whole bunch of circles, one after the other. Perfect, little circles…and circles within circles.

It really is amazing how many rippling circles a single pebble can cause, circles that have no beginning and no end. They just go on and on. Even when the surface goes smooth again, the circles are there, just waiting for another pebble to wake them up.

But the pebble…

The pebble sinks to the bottom, and then gets buried under muck and silt.

Now when I look at my reflection in that clear, glassy water, I can't help but wonder whether I'm the circles, or the pebble.