I saw a video today that stopped me mid-scroll. It wasn’t a travel vlog or a productivity hack; it was just a guy sitting at a table, talking about a rock.
He posed a question that’s been rattling around my brain ever since: If you told a stone it could experience five minutes of human life—but only the worst, most painful five minutes—would it take the deal?
His answer? The rock would fight to be first in line.
The Awe of the Ordinary
We spend so much of our lives trying to “fix” our sadness or escape our stress. We treat negative emotions like bugs in the software of our existence. But to a rock—something that has sat in silence for two hundred million years—even our deepest grief would be a miracle.
Think about it. To a stone, the fact that we have hands to touch, eyes to distinguish a sunset from a grey morning, and a consciousness intricate enough to feel “emo” is a level of complexity that is almost divine. We can look at another person and connect. We can derive meaning from the color of a leaf.
We complain about the weight of our lives, forgetting that having weight means we actually exist.
The “God” Perspective
Then, he took the metaphor a step further, and this is where it got heavy.
What if we are the rocks? What if our entire human existence—the heartbreak, the bills, the existential dread—is just the “worst five minutes” of a higher, divine consciousness?
Even in those “worst five minutes,” we’ve managed to create art. We’ve built philosophies so deep they can pull us out of the mud. He mentioned Rumi and the concept of Ecstasy—that specific human ability to transcend pain through wonder.
Choosing the Five Minutes
It’s easy to feel like life is a series of problems to be solved. But when you look at it through the eyes of the mountain minding its own business for eons, the “problem” of being human starts to look a lot like a privilege.
Even if this life is just a brief, messy window of consciousness before we “disintegrate” back into the earth, I think I’m with the rock. I’d take the deal. I’d take the worst five minutes just to know what it feels like to be here, to think, and to be in awe of the fact that I have hands at all.
So, the next time you’re feeling a little too “emo” about the world, remember: Somewhere, a rock is probably incredibly jealous of your bad day.
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