A young stream once fell in love with a great stone lying in its path. The stone was smooth and beautiful, and the stream curled around it each day, singing as it polished the stone’s surface. “I cannot go on without you,” the stream whispered. “You give my flow a shape, a purpose.”
Years passed. The stone began to crumble, slowly at first, then into gravel, then sand. The stream tried to hold the pieces together, but the current carried the grains away. One morning, the stream woke to find the stone gone entirely.
For a moment, it felt still. Lost. “What am I now?” it asked the silence.
But then it noticed something strange: it had kept moving. It had worn down the very thing it thought it could not lose, not from cruelty, but from the simple, endless truth of its own nature. The stream had always been going somewhere. The stone was a visitor, not the source.
And so the stream flowed on, into the valley, into the river, into the sea, not bitter, not forgetful, but whole. It had not lost its song. It had only mistaken an echo for its own voice.
The sea received it without a word, and the stream finally understood: My heart will go on not because I am strong, but because I was never only the place where we met. -BIGGOD
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