Two Million Stones

Oct 28

1 min read

Illustration for the letter “Two Million Stones” – Letters to a Daughter

Two million stones, give or take, and not one of them says how it got there.

You can stand at the base and put your hand on one. It is warmer than you expect. It comes up to your shoulder. Someone moved it. Then the one above it. Then the one above that, until the last stone sat higher than anything people would build for almost four thousand years.

Nobody wrote down how. Or somebody did, and the page is gone.

So we guessed. Wooden machines. A ramp, straight up the side. A ramp that wound around it. A ramp hidden inside. Each one drawn by someone who was sure.

We said slaves. Thousands, under the whip. It was in the books. Then the ground opened and showed bread ovens, and graves, and bones that had broken and been set. Men who were paid. Men who were looked after.

Every answer arrived complete. Then the sand shifted, and the answer moved. The pyramid did not.

Nobody has finished. The questions are still there. How. Why so exact. Why so large. Why at all.

You will be given answers. You will find some of your own. They will be true. True where you stand, on that day.

The pyramid points north.

Questions for reflection

What would change if you treated your certainties as true for now rather than true forever?

What question are you willing to leave unfinished?

What answer did you once hold as certain that you no longer hold?