The Stone in the Stream

What a worn rock taught me about acceptance, peace, and the search for something deeper

I picked up a stone last week. It sat half-submerged in the creek that runs through the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center near Ward, Colorado, where I had been camping alone as part of a weeklong silent solo retreat.

Much of those five days “on the land” were spent beside that creek: listening to the water, feeling the breeze on my face, watching the aspens sway above me, each one reaching a little farther than the next in search of the sun.

When the sixteen of us were first sent out to our individual campsites, the guidance was simple: just be. That’s harder than it sounds. Our minds are constantly pulled toward the past, into the future, or somewhere else entirely.

Over the years, I’ve spent hundreds of hours meditating. I started with Dan Harris’s 10% Happier app. Ten percent happier felt like a reasonable goal. I tried Calm, Headspace, and Waking Up. Each offered something valuable. But none of them compared to what the forest and a flowing stream could provide. In a place like that, it’s easy—at least for a while—to lose yourself in the present.

During those five days, I must have spent twenty hours just sitting by the stream: listening, watching, doing nothing else. The creek bed was lined with rocks, but the water was too high to reach them safely. Still, I felt drawn to take one home. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe to remember the place. Maybe just to carry a piece of it with me.

On the final morning, the water had receded. I noticed a dry patch along the bank, just wide enough to step down safely. I picked up a few rocks, turning them over in my hands, feeling the edges worn smooth by decades, maybe centuries, of flowing water. Then I saw it: a flat, oval-shaped, rust-colored stone resting just beneath the surface. As strange as it might sound, it called to me. I knew it was the one.

I later asked an AI tool to identify it. The response was surprisingly detailed: most likely a stream-worn metamorphic or sedimentary rock with iron staining. It had probably spent centuries being chipped and shaped by time, water, and pressure. It may have once been the size of a fist. If I had left it, it would have continued its slow erosion, eventually becoming sand or silt, maybe even compressed one day into a new stone, part of another layer of the Earth.

What struck me wasn’t the geology. It was the metaphor.

Twelve years ago, at this same time in July, I was on my honeymoon in Sicily when I first noticed something was off with my vision. A few weeks later, on August 5th, back home in Boulder, a retinal specialist gave me the news. My eyesight, once steady and reliable, had begun its own slow erosion. There was no cure. No way to stop it. Over time, it would take away my central vision.

At first, the changes were so gradual I could barely notice them. But over time, my central vision faded. Some days brought sudden loss—sharp and unexpected—much like the rock must have fractured after countless cycles of freezing and thawing. Most days, though, the change felt quieter. Like the stone, I was being worn down slowly by a current I couldn’t fight.

Today, all that remains of my central vision is a tiny sliver, maybe a two-degree field, in my left eye. The rest is low-resolution peripheral vision. It’s like seeing the world through a narrow straw of sharp detail and vivid color, surrounded by a field of blurred, mostly grayscale shapes. Then again, after twelve years, I’m no longer sure what good vision really looks like. Even that description may be off.

There were moments I felt broken. Less than whole. And yet, just like that rock, I’ve remained strong in ways that aren’t always visible. My edges are softer now. I’ve been reshaped. Not by choice, but by necessity. Not without cost, but not without growth either.

Holding that stone reminded me of something I often forget: I am still capable. Still carrying strength that has been formed through adversity, not in spite of it.

And like the stone, I won’t last forever.

That realization, difficult as it is, points to the only path forward I know: acceptance. Not resignation. Not defeat. Just a quiet willingness to stop fighting what already is. A willingness to stand in the current and let it move through me.

That became the heart of my retreat.

In the silence, away from email and the endless distractions of daily life, I found something I hadn’t expected. For years, I’ve talked about finding peace. Much of my memoir Seeing Clearly explores that journey, and in many ways, I have found some measure of it. But sitting by that stream, I experienced a deeper, more expansive sense of peace than I had ever imagined. Just a few brief glimpses, but enough to know, to feel in my heart, that it was real.

And I knew I wanted more.

But there it was, the problem, tucked quietly into that last sentence.

I wanted.

One of the teachers at the retreat had shared a Zen koan that stayed with me as I reflected on those fleeting glimpses of what I can only call true peace. It went something like this:

What you seek, you can never find. Yet only a seeker can find it.

It’s a riddle that takes some time to settle into. At first, it seems contradictory. But as the days passed, I began to understand.

The peace I longed for wasn’t something I could chase down or grasp. In fact, the very act of wanting it, of craving it, created a subtle form of suffering that kept it out of reach. That realization felt strangely at odds with everything I’d been taught. In the world we live in, we’re told that if we want something badly enough and work hard enough, we can achieve it.

And maybe that’s true for most things: goals, careers, possessions. But peace doesn’t work that way. Peace doesn’t come through striving. It comes when we stop resisting what is. It arrives only through acceptance.

Those fleeting glimpses of peace came when I let go, when I allowed myself to simply be. To rest in the moment. Not worrying about what had gone wrong in the past. Not clinging to what I have today or craving what I don’t. Not trying to push away the things that scare me, like my changing vision and all the limitations it brings. Just being, without resistance. It came when I stopped grasping. It arrived when I stopped insisting that things be different than they are.

Maybe that’s what the stone is trying to teach me.

Strong. Worn. Weathered and shaped by time. It didn’t resist the current. It didn’t cling to what it used to be. It simply allowed itself to be changed. And in that change, there was beauty. There was resilience.

For me, it seemed a perfect metaphor for my journey.

I took the stone home not just as a keepsake, but as a teacher. A quiet reminder that peace isn’t something to chase. It’s something we allow, when we stop trying to control the current and simply let ourselves rest within it.