I knew somebody who knows of a place to look for gold. Somewhere up North. The first time he contacted me, he was already there, bent over backwards under the baked sun, scanning the ground for gold. He used a tiny piece of equipment, the picture he sent me wasn’t too clear, but there amongst the sludge of grime and dirt were specs of gold. It wasn’t much, he grunted.

Later on, he showed me his collection of gems. Emerald, pearl, and sapphire. I even got some for my birthday. Not the store-bought ones that people give each other on special occasions, but the raw ones. Tiny, tiny stones. And he even proved to me that they were real, with that little equipment of his that buzzed when it touched genuine stone. He knew his stones. Even his last name meant stone.

I thought he was either a con man, or a black market dealer, someone who shouldn’t be trusted.

But I didn’t know anybody like that, so I found him interesting to talk to.

I uncovered facts about him. He was a loner of sorts who travelled around the world, but he could carry on a conversation with ease and make someone feel as though they were being listened to.

I taught him what a metaphor was by giving him a rose.

Some time later, when I came back from my trip overseas, I found him alone and sunken. He wasn’t the same person anymore. He lost his attentiveness, his soft-spoken voice and his sense of curiosity about people.

Genuine stone never loses its shine, but this stone lost his.

The trouble with using an equipment to find treasure is that sometimes machines can get faulty or stuck. He had scanned his equipment over the piece of ground, and it had passed over the single most biggest treasure he could have ever found, and it didn’t buzz.

Sometimes there are no easy ways of knowing when we’ve found our treasure or when we’ve lost it. I often wonder, where did that person go? The one that bent his back looking for treasure under the hot baked sun. He no longer does that anymore. Instead, he sits there on the couch, watching TV, letting other people find his treasure.

The treasure seeker couldn’t even see the gold that was right in front of him.

Stones are put under pressure to see what they are made of.