Metaphoric droplets

Ingrid and Jens walked and chatted along the fjord beach edge. They were both eleven years and had summer vacation, so there was no unread homework as disturbed the summer idyll. Some shorebirds darting nodding back and forth, and the seagulls were almost constantly engaged in their daily lives. They flew around screaming hoarse, disharmonious stanzas and dived regularly in the fjord after various delights, which they called: “Everything good from the fjord.”

There were numerous seashells in the sand and many stones, of which a good part was conspicuously beautiful. Regular flooding of the fjord water and the automatically supplied polishing of beach sand and seaweed, made eventually stones look fairy-tale like. And when the sunlight glittered in them, it was difficult just to let them be for show when you were a boy and eleven years.

Jens bent regularly and grabbed a stone, which he deftly threw obliquely into the water, so it could slip. He had done it so many times that seven slipped in one throw was not unusual. And it was a pleasure for him to do it in Ingrid’s company, because he felt she admired his ability to get many slip aligned in one throw.

Ingrid saw a stone with a particularly beautiful hue. She picked it up and handed it to him. He shook his head, regarded it with a connoisseur’s eye and said it was too heavy to slip. He did, however, accept it and threw it into the fjord, as far as he could. The water rose in a small pillar where the stone fell. There was a “sjup,” and the gulls made quickly and effortlessly some evasive maneuvers, even though they were completely outside the danger zone.

The stone struck in the water, and by the resulting water column, got a lot of drops suddenly life. In the fjord, they never was accustomed to regard themselves as individual beings, but now this experience was forced upon them with shocking suddenness.

On the way up was a small drop of close encounter with another small drop.

“Hello beautiful, how are you?” Exclaimed it spontaneously.

“Yes, well, it goes forward … or rather upward, but sooner or later it might go downward, I guess. Who knows?”

“You sound quite philosophical. We two are surely twin souls, because as it seems from my perspective, we look like each other like two drops of water.”

“It may be something about it. You are not at just the deep water with this view, because I can philosophize, so the waves going high.”

“There is also much to ponder. Where did we come from and where are we going? I mean, how will it all end? There must be a purpose with life. We can’t just been created randomly.”

“Yes of course there is a meaning to our lives. I do not think it’s a coincidence that we two meet here and now. Hey, by the way, notice how quiet it suddenly becomes. It’s quite wonderful. I hope it will last forever.”

“It’s the calm before the storm, I think, because I can feel on my water that we soon are on our way down, but it’s probably natural?”

“Yes, it goes up and down in life. Oops, and now it is strongly downward. Holy stickleback where it tickles wonderful in the stomach.”

Two seconds later was sprayed almost over, and the drops again united with their creator. At the same time disappeared all need to assume anything, it all told themselves now.

For an outsider it may seem surprising that two drops bother to speculate about whom or what they basically are and where they came from, but for them it was a whole life lived through, and they had not seen it as a special short time … and certainly not as wasted time.

Think for example of a mayfly that lives in approximately twenty-four hours, where it can reach to grow, proliferate, get old and die.

Twenty-four hours would certainly have occurred the drops like an eternity if they had been able to relate to it. But it was not in their cards.

“Look, Ingrid nine slips.” Jens prided himself on his last throw. “But it was also a perfect slip stone, I just found. Hey look, there’s a bird’s nest with chicks. Maybe it is sandpipers. They are aligned the environment and look like sand and stones. Be careful not to step on them. We should leave now, so the parents do not become scared and let their chicks alone and lost. It takes time before they can fend for themselves.”