A young boy was told by his teacher that whenever he felt an emotion, he should go to a secret lake that was still as glass, like a mirror. All he had to do was stand with his feet in the water, close his eyes, and feel his emotions. Then a stone would form at his feet. Sometimes it was a tiny pebble for a tiny feeling, and sometimes it was a huge rock he could barely lift. Then he was told to throw the stone into the lake.

The small pebbles would make small ripples, and he would feel them all over his body. Then he would stand there until the lake became glass again; it would just take a few seconds. But sometimes the larger rocks would splash and make big waves, and he would have to use all his strength to stand strong in the lake until it became like glass.

Throughout his life, pebbles and stones collected all over the shore of this lake every time he went there. When he was a teenager, he wouldn’t always need to toss the stone into the lake; he started trusting and knowing that the little pebble would be gone in just a couple of seconds, and no matter how big the stone, the lake would always return to glass. He began seeing the world through the eyes of the lake.

Sometimes he would smile and just skip the rock across the water. As the rock skipped, it would almost tickle. He would even put a stone in his pocket sometimes to remind him about a lesson he had just learned. When he was having big emotions, the stones would form so big that he would laugh and think, “Wow, I was really upset.” And when he was happy, the stones were like boulders to hang out on and just view the beautiful lake.

He graduated from high school and started working. He was a young man now, and his life became too busy for visits to his childhood lake. It was out of the way, and his social life, dating, and college took up his energy.

Then people started discovering the lake. He thought, “Did some jerk post my lake on Instagram or something?” These new people weren’t connected to the lake like he was.

He didn’t realize that every time he pushed down a feeling, tried to escape, or let his ego pretend something wasn’t a big deal, more people came to the lake. He wouldn’t sit and quiet his mind. He was ignoring his lake.

But then he went to the lake one day, and there were thousands of people just throwing rocks into the lake for fun. They brought their boats, jet skis, and rafts onto the lake and treated it like a toy. It was no longer like glass. The surface was choppy and rough, serrated with waves and even whitecaps: wake from every boat, every thought, every person he was trying to impress or prove himself to. This was his mind: noisy and disconnected.

The lake wasn’t very big and was sloshing around so roughly and chaotically that when he put his toes in the water, nothing happened. He was overwhelmed by what he saw; he could only feel the waves splashing up his legs as he smelled smoke, vape, and fuel and heard everyone else joyfully expressing their favorite form of pollution.

He picked up a fist-sized stone next to him and threw it as high as he could. He didn’t care if it hit anything, but when it broke the surface of the water, he couldn’t see the ripples. He didn’t know what to feel, what was his, and what was just a jet ski trying to impress the girls. He couldn’t feel himself or the lake. The lake couldn’t feel him either.

Every emotion he had now went unnoticed, or he was uncertain what it was. Just to feel even the tiniest feeling, he now had to stand in the water and exaggerate. He had to turn it into something much bigger than it was so that it would form a giant rock he could throw into the lake. But he couldn’t find a rock big enough or make a splash big enough to create ripples, and the waves never stopped. His mind was being bullied by a “good times gang” obviously led by Jimmy Buffett and Kid Rock.

He became overwhelmed and numb. The crowds made him feel so empty and so alone. His head fell into his palms, and all he could think or feel was, “I am done. It’s over.” In that moment, he felt his fingertips start to get cold, and he lifted his head out of his hands.

The lake had frozen.

As he looked around, there was no trace of any person, raft, cooler, or any other form of recreational pollution. All he could hear or see was his breath. 

He felt a small emotion, a mix of being happy to be in the quiet and kinda missing all the action that distracted him from his busy mind. Also, he could really use some warmer clothes now.

He tried to put his feet in the water, but it was frozen solid. He picked up a stone on the shore beside him and tossed it; it just “tinked” onto the frozen surface. He felt nothing, just frozen and hardened.

He said to the lake, “Those people just came, used you up, and left.”

He sat there, trying to feel, but the cold just kept numbing him out more and more. He felt empty and lonely for the first time. This lake was a part of him.

He imagined his sadness rippling through his mind, then settling still like glass. Then his loneliness was so deep that the waves moved his whole body, and he sat there strong until he was still again. Then he started to feel hot, then hotter, and kept getting hotter. He closed his eyes, trying to still his mind, but in his head, it was like staring into the sun.

He wasn’t sad; he was angry. No, he was furious. 

How could all these people use up this magical place?

With his eyes still closed, he felt a huge stone forming at his feet. He squeezed his eyes shut, crouched down really low, and put his hands on the stone to pick it up. It was hot and almost burned his hands as he threw it. He waited for that familiar “kerplunk” that a large stone makes when it hits the water, but there was just a dull thud. He opened his eyes. The lake was dry, and there was just a cloud of dust where the rock landed.

He sat there, feeling dried up and empty, realizing he was tired. The lake was tired.

He was sick of feeling and judging everything around him. He was tired and angry about all the time he had spent at this lake, focusing on his feelings. This was not a special place; this was a hiding place.

A man walked up behind him with a whole team of people and machines.

“This will work! I like it! We can make this lake even better!”

“How? What is happening?”

“We can pump in water here, put a fountain and a waterfall there, and even put in fish and plants to make it perfect.”

“It already was perfect.”

“Do you like these stones?”

“Yes.”

“Which ones do you like the most?”

He looked at the stones and remembered every ripple and every wave, but the emotions weren’t there. It was like looking at old friends now. He giggled to himself, remembering how the big one he was looking at had seemed like such a big deal. But just like all the others, it had made a splash and then become like glass again. He looked at an area around a huge rock where he had thrown a stone every time he felt angry about something. He saw how each stone had become smaller and smaller until he no longer tossed anything in that area. That huge emotion didn’t even make a grain of sand at his feet anymore.

“I like all of them.”

“We can make those stones. Any kind you want.”

“I didn’t want any of them; they just happened.”

“Well, now you can make them happen.”

“That seems weird. I love my lake just as it is, and each stone is where it should be.”

“It’ll be perfect, young man, and soon, your lake will be my lake.”

Then a crack opened on the far shore of the lake, and a small stream of water started flowing into the lake bed, growing larger and faster as the lake began to fill. The young man stood and rooted his feet in the dry lakebed as he always had when the waves of rage pushed against him.

“Sir, I think the lake has something to say about that.”

As the water touched the young man’s toes, the developers stepped back so their fancy shoes wouldn’t get wet. Then the stream burst into a huge wave, and the lake filled with water. He felt connected again, as he had when he was a boy. Happiness filled his body and formed a massive boulder beneath his feet, lifting him into the air above the powerful rushing water. The developers turned to run, but the wave was too fast, scattering them all the way out to their trucks and machines.

Soaking wet and flustered, the man yelled out, “We can’t build here; this place is unsafe.”

They gathered their team and started to leave. The head developer turned around and saw the young man sitting on the boulder surrounded by rippling water, smiling peacefully as the lake’s surface turned to glass.