With the pressures of senior year, nothing has quite stood out to me the way an old Doctor Who episode has. The episode follows the Doctor as he, quite literally, struggles against death itself. A reference that was particularly striking was the telling of a tale from the Brothers Grimm regarding a king and his advisor.
In this tale, the king asked his advisor how long eternity lasts, to which his advisor responded with a parable. He described a diamond mountain, a mile high and a mile wide, which happened to be the nesting place of a small bird. Every 100 years, this bird would make a trip to the mountain to sharpen its beak and slowly whittle away the diamond. The advisor claimed that after the mountain was cut to dust by the bird, the first second of eternity had passed.
So, what’s the point?
Well, the bird encapsulates the core of what it means to be human; the bird is a struggler. In the face of this insurmountable diamond wall, the bird grinds its beak against the stone, superficially making no change, but after millions of years slowly overcoming its challenge.
I see in this bird a quality I want to embody, the ability to struggle. It is a pattern that is repeated in nearly every life: we struggle, we fight, we fail and the cycle repeats. The bird does not stop though, it picks itself up and hits the wall again, and again, and again.
For myself, that diamond wall is a lot less literal. My wall is one of college applications, essays and the general responsibilities of life. It is a personal wall and the struggle against it is hard. Throwing yourself at it every day to seemingly no results is both exhausting and discouraging, but when I find myself in doubt, I think of the bird. Like the bird, I continue to claw at the wall knowing that however seemingly small the step is, it is one step closer to breaking through to the other side.
The bird’s relentless determination serves as a poignant reminder that the essence of being human lies in our capacity to face challenges head-on. That is the history of human society itself. We struggled against the dark and made fire; we struggled against hunger and developed agriculture; with modern technology and medicine, we struggle against death itself performing miracles that 100 years ago would seem the act of the divine. We are the inheritors of generations of human struggle. Pushes for wider access to education, fights against social injustices, battles against economic inequality, each struggle different, but all meaningful.
The metaphor of the bird and the diamond mountain resonates deeply. It symbolizes the power of sustained effort and the triumph of human will. As I navigate this challenging year, I keep the spirit of the struggler, knowing that I will come out the other side.