Gray Rock

By GrahamLewis · Apr 29, 2019 ·
  1. There is a technique promoted for defusing arguments, called "Gray Rock." The idea is that you be sure any responses you make are factual, calm, and unemotional. In other words, boring, like a plain gray rock, nothing of interest. So anyone trying to trigger a response from you will eventually give up.

    It does work, but I no longer like the name.

    I'm thinking of that boulder we got dropped off in our front yard (my neighbor came over the other day and asked me, "so what happened? God's aim was off? He missed your house?"). It is, I think, basalt, a very hard rock and definitely gray in color, now that the centuries of brown mud have mostly washed off.

    But it's anything but boring.

    If I glance out the window at it, I see first of all its irregular shape, flats and sharps and everything in between. Shadows emerge, move, and merge as sunlight works its way through the day, and in some places tiny bits of mica sparkle. The color slips through ranges of gray even when it's dry, but when it rains the rock becomes almost piebald, wet areas turning dark, almost black, dry areas pale, almost white, and in places darker wet streaks cut through the otherwise dry pale spots. When the sunlight changes and the rain stops, the rock becomes something else again. At night it's not gray, it's a black monolith, except when moonlight hits it, and it becomes a pale shadow. And when it snowed the other day, bits stuck to the flat areas, so it sort of resembled a distant mountain range. I'm wondering what sort of patterns the birds will leave on it when they perch on the branches above. But it's all good, it's all in there, the wondrous beauty of nature and life.

    It may be a gray rock, but it's not boring. If you bother to look, which, I suppose is the point of the gray rock defusing strategy; anyone who is emotional enough to be picking a fight is not likely to calmly pick out subtleties.

    I can tell you this. They are missing out on a lot.

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