THE TOP STONE AND THE FOOT STONE

I made up this story and told this to my daughter and my nephew and niece the other day. The story goes like this: One day, the Pharaoh decided to build a pyramid and not just an ordinary pyramid. The Pharaoh wanted to build the biggest, the tallest and the most beautiful pyramid ever and with that, the Pharaoh called in the Master Mason and ordered him to build him the biggest, the tallest and the most beautiful pyramid ever and to finish it as soon as humanly possible. And so, the Master Mason wasted no time and started to design and build the pyramid. During the building of the pyramid, the Master Mason set out and discovered a huge sturdy boulder and he brought it to his workshop beside the rising pyramid and he broke the giant boulder into two halves and left it there for the night. The two halves of the boulder “speak” to each other that night.

The first half asked the second half: “Hey brother, you know what they’re going to do to us?”

The second one replied: “I heard that they are going to make a pyramid and fashion one of us into the TOP STONE while the remaining one will be the FOOT STONE.”

“I see, what you want to be, brother?” asked the first one.

“The Top Stone of course! What else should I be?” replied the first.

“But why?” came the quick question.

“Why, without the Top Stone, there will be no pyramid!”

“How come?”

“How come?! When people look up at the pyramid and shouted to others, look! It’s the pyramid. They all be pointing their fingers at the top of the pyramid where the Top Stone lay, nobody would be pointing at the base of the pyramid and say, there’s the pyramid!” “The Top Stone is the crowning glory of the pyramid and without the triangular top, there will be no pyramid at all!” “Besides, there can only be one Top Stone and hence, that stone would be unique of all the stones that made up the pyramid and that is why, I wanted to be the Top Stone.”

The first went silent for a while and said: “Well, I just wanted to be something useful and to do great things, Top Stone or not. It doesn’t matter.”

“Really? It doesn’t matter?”

“Well, yeah, though the Top Stone is important and glamorous, without the Foot Stone to support it at the top. The Top Stone will fall. Though there are many of us Foot Stones that made up the pyramid, miss one Foot Stone and the whole pyramid would collapse.”

“Yeah sure, to each their dream.” Said the second stone.

The next day, the Master Mason came and fashion the second half of the boulder into the Top Stone that it desired to be while made a Foot Stone out of the first.

Both stones lay at the work site for many years waiting for their appointed time to become part of what is shaping up to be a grand edifice. Then suddenly, the Pharaoh abandoned the project all together and both stone lay in the dessert almost forgotten. Then one day, a new Pharaoh came to the throne and decided to build a bridge over a raging river and called the by now aging Master Mason to do the task. The Master Mason went to his old workshop and found both the Top Stone and the Foot Stone on the ground. The Master Mason found that the Top Stone not suitable for the project at hand because of its triangular shape and picked the Foot Stone instead and placed the latter as the foundation stone at the bottom of the river holding up the bridge and for countless years thereafter, the Foot Stone silently toiled, holding up the bridge and allowing many to cross the river safely. The Foot Stone realizes his dream of being something useful and do great things but nobody knew nor cared whereas the Top Stone was lost somewhere in the dessert buried in sand….

I told the kids that someday when they grow up, they should decide whether they would wanted to be the Top Stone or the Foot Stone and it is their choice to make… Be a Top Stone, lavished with praise with all the glamor that being on top but they had succeed in their endeavor against all odds and fierce competition lest they will be forgotten (the unfinished pyramid) or be the Foot Stone, doing important things but largely unknown, unsung, unheard of.

But guess what? They don’t understand what I’m saying. Not yet.