Polishing my stone

This is a story of a humorous misunderstanding in my life that yet yielded important and interesting results.

I first learned about Taoism when I was somewhat young, not that young but say, middle school or so. When I was told its central tenet of (roughtly translated from the Korean) 'polishing the way/path', I mistook the word for way (도 'do') for rock or stone (돌 'dol') and did not realize my mistake until somewhat recently. So for several years, I thought it was actually 'polishing a stone'. But this made perfect sense to me. In many ways this still kept the same principle of Taoism that I inherently understood, however different the actual phrase became.

I found this fascinating. Thinking about it now, after I realized my misunderstanding, I think the original imagery I had of polishing a stone as metaphor is still extremely powerful and makes the concept easier to understand than some abstract notion of 'the way'. The path to enlightenment is paved by polishing my stone everyday, whatever you might think the 'stone' is--the stone of oneself, the essence of one's being, the soul, the idea of the 'self'? Maybe the difficulty in putting into words precisely what the stone is makes this just as vague as saying 'the way', but everyone can picture what polishing a stone is like and further, from such imagery one can understand this for themselves without a need for such exact definition. Everyone can point to a concept of 'This is me. This is my stone. This is my stone I polish each day'. 

The days go by one by one, a little faster than the one before as I get older. But each passing day I continue to polish my stone.

On an unrelated note, I realized I don't have the focus and willpower to be a writer. But undergrad also destroyed my succinct clarity to be a lawyer, perhaps.