Diamonds and breadcrumbs
By: Bartek Jagniątkowski
Tags: Philosophy, Random Thoughts, Stoicism, Life, Essay

My partner, who came up with this lovely metaphor, tells me this now and then, and every time she says that, I know she’s right. Hell, she herself sometimes struggles to see past those crumbs to find the diamond and gets stuck in the perpetual crumbliness. But being fickle-minded humans, we are guilty as charged of fixating and struggling with looking past the shit to see the fucking diamonds. And it’s hard to see those diamonds even if you know they’re there because rewiring your brain and changing your habits is a hell of a task. And we don’t like to do hard things. The way humans are made, we want to feel the change instantly, especially in these times — we want it now because our civilization is hellbent on the ”instant.”

All it truly takes is at least trying to see the diamonds instead of the breadcrumbs.

When you’re bending your knees to take a closer look at what’s beneath your feet, try to start with brushing all those breadcrumbs away first, and shift your focus to what’s connecting you to others instead of finding the difference. Just noticing that the common is there is a start to understanding ourselves and others better. When faced with a different opinion, position, or reaction take a look at what’s your relation to that opinion, position, or reaction. Try to find the common ground, a sense of connection instead of disconnect and difference.

Give it your best and try.

It won’t always be there, or you won’t feel like looking for it — and that’s just as well, you can always walk away without hurting each other.

Small, daily changes are more than enough to slowly change the way we react to the world. One of my favorite quotes is the one about the dripping water hollowing out the stone:

it’s not the sheer force of the will, it’s the persistence of the process.

And it just might happen that one time you see the metaphorical diamond, the next time you won’t. Or the next. Or perhaps not even the one after that.

And that’s just as fine, too.

Maybe for you, it’s the fourth time’s a charm. Or fifth.

Life’s hard and tedious as it is, full of useless filler and noise — stop challenging yourself by making it even more difficult. We are supposed to be the peak of evolution. To paraphrase Descartes: We are, therefore, we think. Maybe we’re not used to using our brains the way we now need to? Perhaps our physical progress got so far ahead of our thinking we can’t keep up? But as the most advanced species (like we think we are), we should be able to figure this shit out.

When you see past the rain, past the traffic jam on your commute to work, past someone else’s opinion about you, what you’ll begin to see is the weather you can experience, the fact you have a job to go to, and that opinion is just that — an opinion that doesn’t define who you are. A daily dose of stoicism might be just the thing our world needs right now.

Take a step back, take a deep breath, and notice the fucking diamond.

You can’t control the outside world, how others behave, or what they do or say or think. What you can control are your reactions and your way of thinking.