Growing up, I was of the understanding that there were many things that just, “were”.   Some of these were physical things, and they behaved in ways I expected;  science worked in prescribed, mathematical formulas, combining two elements into a new compound, letting me peer into a microscope, and assuring that slamming my bike into a curb would result in another Spiderman band-aid.  Things in the physical world, at least, seemed pretty solid and concrete.

Psychologically, it was stable and steady-as-she-goes sailing, as traditions were defined one way, emotions another, interactions with humans were expected to go this particular way, relationships worked like that, romance and love were best done like Example X.

This was also the case in the mental world with my understandings and faith.      Faith, in similar ways, was a concrete, true thing — Jesus loved me, the Bible was flawless, the earth was about 6,000 years old or so, and Samson beat the living tar out of a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass.   The mental and faith aspects of my youth were pretty solid, unchanging, and concrete as well as the physical.

And then…I grew up.

The concrete facade of childhood starts to develop cracks when you get into the higher grades of school and your education starts to turn from the scheme of, “memorize this, recite that” and into more abstract thought — “what do you think about love?   Why do you think the character in the book committed that crime?   Explain a hug to someone who has never had one before.”    You start to notice that there are variations, exceptions, in how you perceive and understand the world and your mind starts to supplement your knowledge with new branches of ideas attached to the old, a new addition on a creaky old house.

Then you graduate from high school and onto college and the landscape shifts in a major way again — now everyone is intensely interested in what you think, mostly so they can pick it apart and find the flaws in your belief.    Logic, persuasion, argument, and debate wreak at the knowledge you carry in your head, the waves crashing against the house you’ve built, but you realize it’s made of sand — fluff that falls apart at the first splash of water, the particles unable to hold together under the onslaught of evidence.

Frantically, you try to bolster it up — you build braces, reinforcements, new rules and exceptions to fortify the existing structure.   After all, this is what you’ve known your whole life — we must save it, SAVE IT!   Hurry, hurry — your mind reeling and your eyes blurring from the battles you wage all around you.   You nail on more and more slabs of justification, trying desperately to tie this to that like it was before, but the cracks are there and growing, and time is limited for your sand house, and one day it becomes too much — your fingers slip and a wall breaks and the roof teeters and you scream and — it all falls apart into NOTHING.

And there is silence.    And the drip of water.    And a weeping soul.

From the wreckage, the flotsam and jetsam of childhood understanding and thought, emerges a single brick set upon the ground.     It is a long time coming and hard fought.   Then another appears next to it.    You sit and study the bricks for a long time, estimating, calculating, questioning.   At some point you mix the mortar of logic, of perception, of understanding.     Care and patience go into this recipe, along with deliberation and calculating — you do not want to get this wrong.   At long last the mixture is complete and you cement the two bricks together, shaping things to match neatly, evenly, solidly.

The building is slow and the process is labor and mind intensive.   Every brick comes slowly; the mortar even slower.   Sometimes entire sections have to be torn down and replaced, brick by brick, from the bottom.    Months, sometimes years pass between additional pieces, the wall weathering the storms and problems but biding its time.    The architect shows up from time to time simply to look, to examine, to calculate.   He smiles, he frowns, he thinks.    And sometimes that’s all that happens.

And sometimes a new brick appears.

This, then, is the most important lesson that you may ever learn in this brief existence of life.    The ideas and concepts taught to you as a child are useful as a child, but they don’t have much of an analogue in the real world.   There is very little, if anything, that can be said to be wholly true, right, or correct without exception, and a mature and seasoned outlook is one that keeps few of these concepts as unchanging and solidified.    Even the strongest of walls may be toppled, the greatest of beliefs shattered into the void.

It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to learn and come to terms with and yet, as I look around at others, their lives, and their understandings, I wish it for those that cannot see the shakiness of their own houses and the imminent dangers that exist if a large wave were to crash into it, toppling all they know.   I know that this is how everything works together, yet I cannot force their hand or their minds…I can only suggest, show, and hope that along the way, something sticks.   It is all I can do.   It is why I write this blog and the things inside of it — not just for myself, but perhaps for those still struggling to hold together the shack of youthful thought, hoping they can rise again and find the security and solace in doing so.

I think, I ponder, I question, I muse and along the way, I can see the haze of a new brick coming into existence.    It is one in a million in a structure of a thousand years, and I’m just getting started.

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