I visited New Zealand earlier this year and one of the highlights was a glowworm cave outside Auckland. Imagine a series of pitch-black and low-slung caverns whose walls are covered in large stationary fireflies. Your own starry night, cold and up close.
On this particular tour, our guide said something about the cave’s stalactites and stalagmites that struck me as a good metaphor for relationships.
By the way, stalactites point down. The word includes the letter C. Think C for ceiling. And stalagmites point up. The letter G, for ground.
“Any time you find a stalactite, you’ll usually find a stalagmite,” he said. They form in pairs, fed by the same source of mineral deposits.
He went on, “They grow at the rate of one centimeter every 100 years. And sometimes, when enough time has passed, they will connect. These two, for example,” he pointed at a slender pair, separated by the width of a baby’s toe, “have been growing for 15,000 years. Soon they’ll touch.”
Fifteen thousand years. Certainly puts my relationship problems in perspective :)