A shovel is an amazing yet simple tool seemingly unchanged through eons since it’s creation.
It seems to be the natural evolution of the spoon, curved and able to scoop whatever it can accumulate and its user can carry.
The clear difference besides the obvious size is the flattened edge, safe enough that anyone can use it, sharp enough that it can break ground.
It was designed for one purpose in mind, to dig.
What it digs or what it creates is up to the individual in control of that simple tool.
At least, that’s how it usually is.
Gravedigger, your shovel is your call sign, dig is in your name, it defines who you are and yet, you don’t choose what you do with it, you don’t really control the instrument, it and the man who bestowed it upon you control you.
Tombstone asks you to work for him and bury the bodies in preparation for the journey he takes them on.
In agreement, you give up all autonomy and do the one thing you do best. You dig and bury the bodies. Dig and bury, dig and bury, dig and bury, ad nauseam.
Gravedigger, be honest with me, is that all you want your life to be? A facsimile of Tombstone doing the lesser bit of his role in this world?
He takes people on a journey, he guides them and even though he performs a specific role, at least his has power. What does yours have, what’s in it for you?
Digging is in your name and grave is but burying bodies isn’t, you can dig and choose something else to do with the shovel, how about while Tombstone takes them on a journey, you give them a little extra meaning?
There is one occupation that uses a shovel more than you, a gardener and if there’s one thing I’ve noticed around a grave more than the Tombstone, it’s the flowers around it, the tombstone tells the logistical information of when they were born and when they died, those flowers prove their life meant something and touched someone , a true marker just not set in stone.
For every body you bury, how about you plant something next to them? A flower that makes their family smile knowing someone else cared about them or a tree that gives them he shade they need to spend ore time with those they lost.
Yes, Tombstone takes everyone on their final journey, how about you help the others in their hardest? It’s not the dead who need guided, it’s the living, dying is easy, life is hard.
If there’s one thing about guiding and potentially giving others meaning in their lives, it often means giving ourselves meaning as well.
You can choose to dig and bury or you can choose to dig and grow, one is your role, the other can be your purpose.
A shovel is simple but it doesn’t mean it can’t help out the things in this life that are the most complicated.