Grind

Does" busy"-ness speak of a life well lived?

The millstone is a fascinating tool. I was eight when I first saw and tinkered with a real millstone. It was during a visit to my grandparents house in Ilo-ilo.

I remember being amazed at its smooth, solid feel. I kept exclaiming to myself at how it was stone-age cool! It was made of two huge circular stones, one on top of the other. It looked like a hamburger, with the upper stone containing a hole in the middle and a wooden handle near the rim.

My curiosity must have been so obvious that Lolo offered to show me how to use the gilingan. He scooped a salop of corn kernels from a nearby sack, and casually poured the corn right through the hole of the gilingan. With one hand, he cranked the wooden handle counterclockwise, intermittently pouring over the remaining corn with his other hand. I still remember that distinct grating sound.

If you've ever seen those Indiana Jones movies, you would have recognized the sound as that of a huge stone door being opened. Think of that and add the sharp cackle of crushed corn and you get an idea of what it sounded like.

The ground corn was then coming out from the gap between the upper and the base stone. In my amazement, I asked Lolo to lift the upper stone so I could examine how it worked. He laughed and then with a grunt, heaved the stone and laid it upside down. The interior part had crude grooves and as I ran my fingers through it, I winced at the thought of having my digits ground by it.

Whoever coined the term, daily grind, must have seen how millstones work. Aside from that, he must have been quite in touch with reality, acutely aware of how daily life feels. He might have felt reality's weight and pressure grinding him down. Like how it is for the rest of us, schedules and responsibilities can often become millstones, with you being caught right in between.

Somehow, that thought can also make me wince.