I came across this video of 11,000 marbles, and it made me happy.
I saw it a week after a committee at church was finishing the arrangement of speakers for the Adult Education class in February and early March. There was a special guest going to take the third slot, so we only had to work on three weeks. But then that person changed to the second slot, and eventually out of the month altogether.
Finally, we had nailed down A, B, C, and D. Phew! Then A had to drop out. Fortunately, I FINALLY got hold of someone else, the person I had actually pursued first, so it was set: E, B, C, and D.
Then midweek, another person had to reschedule, but was available for a week the committee wasn’t in charge of. I reached the pastors, and NOW the schedule was E, B, F, D and C.
I gained two pounds that week from stress eating. Seriously.
So watching marbles was soothing. Then I played the video again, stopped watching it midway through, but continued to listen to it. It sounded like waters rushing against the shore. It was surprisingly soothing, putting me almost in a Zen-like state.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before. One of my great pet peeves is when someone creates a project like this, or something more elaborate, in the Rube Goldberg tradition, naysayers will squawk, “They must have too much time on their hands!”
In my experience, what this REALLY means is that someone has created a project the squawkers wouldn’t – and probably COULDN’T – have spent their time doing. Which is fine until they belittle those who are doing that something.
At a point when I was starting to lose my marbles a little bit, I’m happy that someone had the skill and interest and sense of fun to move 11,000 orbs of various colors.