“I am like a huge rough stone rolling down from a high mountain; and the only polishing I get is when some corner gets rubbed off by coming in contact with something else, striking with accelerated force against religious bigotry, priestcraft, lawyer-craft, doctor-craft, lying editors, suborned judges and jurors, and the authority of perjured executives, backed by mobs, blasphemers, licentious and corrupt men and women—all hell knocking off a corner here and a corner there. Thus will I become a smooth and polished shaft in the quiver of the Almighty. …” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 304.) A common way to polish stones is to pack a group of stones with a similar hardness into a barrel tumbler with sand, grit, or other abrasives and set the whole lot tumbling. As the rocks rattle around in the tumbler, they start to chip the rough edges off of each other, which are then further refined by the smaller particles of sand and grit. Every stone in the tumbler is as equally likely to be struck by and to strike every other stone. This is by design. The rocks could not be polished unless they slammed into each other and broke off each other’s rough edges. All of us have our own rough edges. All of us end up colliding into each other. Some of those collisions end up with our corners getting knocked off, which is never a pleasant experience. While we all must take responsibility for our lives and ensure that to the best of our abilities we are neither causing harm to others through thoughtless neglect or malicious intent, nor are we accepting unquestioningly the abuse or neglect of others, nevertheless, we do have to accept the reality that despite all of our best intentions, we are too weak and blind and foolish to avoid or prevent all collisions. We have to stop holding grudges when someone smashes into us and knocks a chip or two off of us, especially if they did so accidentally. We should be grateful that through that painful collision we have come away more polished. And we have to stop beating ourselves up when our interactions with others reflect less favorably on us than they should, especially if we knock a chip or two of them merely by accident. We are all just polishing each other and it’s often unpleasant but we will all be the better for it.
