Solid as a Rock

After talking about Golding and his view on human nature, we students got to look at two contradicting views of human nature through Mencius and Hsun Tzu. We learned that Hsun Tzu believed human nature to be decidedly evil and that Mencius believed human nature to be inherently good. All of us were asked to write a paper on how we feel about human nature and whether we think it is good or evil, and I couldn't help but ponder deep into the back of my head to find to try to find something I had done to sum up how I felt about it. It came to me when we were paving our poolside a couple weeks ago. I had to lay a bunch of different stone slabs in order so that they would come together and form a walk-way. They were great looking stones; comprised of shiny minerals like those seen on tops of mountains. I was told to get off all the dirt and sand off of the stones so the other workers could lay down cement and seal everything. So I brushed off all the dirt from the stones but whenever I laid one stone down to brush up another the first one would get dirty all over again. I was never able to get all the dirt off of all these stones! I believe that at the core of human nature, we are all good, bright, and strong. However we get dirty from time to time because of the earth and how many chances it gives us to mess up. When we get dirty and commit sin we try to brush off all the dirt covering our true selves through forgiveness, then we get dirty again, and do it all over. Hsun Tzu makes a good point when he says good is done through conscious activity because sometimes we do get lazy and become hesitant to brush the dirt off ourselves. However, under all the dirt we are good, strong, shiny, and solid as a rock.