The boy looked across the classroom at his teacher. He was sitting in the backroom of the class. He listened carefully to the school assignment. The teacher was asking the students to go home and find an inadequate rock.

The boy pondered the assignment in his mind as he walked home. “What is an inadequate rock,” he thought. When he arrived at home, he looked around the yard. There were rocks of various shapes and sizes. There were rocks of different colors and textures. He wondered to himself, “how will I know if a rock is inadequate.”

The boy thought and thought. “If I am to determine if a rock is inadequate, I will first have to determine what an adequate rock is.” The boy went on the internet and looked up rocks. It turned out that rocks have various uses. Some rocks are used to make concrete, some rocks go on wedding rings, some rocks pave roads, some rocks are used in art, some rocks are used in landscaping. All rocks add their own unique diversity and beauty to the Earth. The size, structure, and compound of the rock determines its use. The rock is only adequate when it is put to its correct use.

The boy sat and pondered for a moment. “All rocks are adequate when they are being used for their respective purpose,” thought the boy. When a rock is being used for something, it wasn’t intended for, it is inadequate. “The first step is to determine the rock’s purpose,” the boy mumbled to himself.

The boy walked over to the rocks that were stacked up in a neat little line, in front of his mother’s flower bed. The rocks were stacked to form a wall. The rock wall held back the dirt that his mother’s flowers were planted in. The boy looked over each rock. Some rocks were large. Some rocks were small. There were rocks of various shapes and sizes. Each rock was stacked on top of each other. The rocks were laid in a crevice that matched their particular shape and size.

The boy picked up a large rock. “If I were to place this large rock in the small crevice, it would be inadequate,” thought the boy. The boy picked up a small rock. “If I were to place this small rock in the large crevice, it would be inadequate.”

Later that night, the boy opened his science book and read about rock formation. It turns out that rocks change. They grow and shrink with time. Their shape and composition changes with pressure, heat, wear, and contact with other elements. Furthermore, a rock is always in a state of change. A rock’s adequacy to a specific purpose is also time specific. As the composition of the rock changes, so does its adequacy to a specific purpose. The boy thought some more about his school assignment. Every rock is adequate, when it is accepted for what it is designed for, at its current state, in a specific point of time.