While pondering what
to write this week, I looked outside my living room window and saw across
the street the ruins of a magnificent snow fort, built by the neighbourhood
kids just a few days ago. I, a mere voyeur, watched them build it too,
for hours, half the day really. I’m not sure who had more fun! With shovels
and tennis rackets, and anything that would help collect the White Stuff,
borrowed from as many neighbours as they could carry it away from, they
finished off with four towers, one at each corner of this relative monolith.
No one seemed to get tired, and but for a perfunctory supper break, they
played in and around it well into the darkness, the amber glow of the streetlights
illuminating them and their work of art.
Today, it lies in a sad, indiscernible form on the lawn
- temperatures were a bit too ‘warm’ and with it came some rain, and this
labour of pure joy, enthusiasm, and imagination is now but a shadow of
its former glory. Yet I don’t think the architects’ hearts are all too
heavy, and I can’t imagine it actually ruined their day, maybe a short-lived
twinge, which of course won’t deter them - I know that come the next Snow
Day, they’ll be out there again… starting all over from scratch.
It makes me wonder why it occurs, that we often lose that
enthusiasm and sense of adventure for Beginning again… Somehow it seems
that maybe we are the “childish” ones, begrudging anything that does not
remain “just so” - challenging us to embark on further ventures, in different
directions, to re-stoke energy and enjoy the view of new horizons. Perhaps
it’s the pace nowadays that we are forced to reckon with. Yet for the most
part, we in fact created and ‘invited’ it. Then again, perhaps it’s that
blissful sense of accomplishment while being in the moment, which is often
ignored. But maybe there’s one more option we keep overlooking; that is
to make a certain peace with not knowing when our castles are going to
melt away… and to build those towers anyway - for the joy of reaching and
looking up…
~ The
universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it. (1)
I have but little taste for change ~
What merit there is in staying the same!
But oh, what a growing spirit gains
with naught but inner voices saying,
“The World has only ever been thus!”
Yet, with time I hope to beg or borrow,
I’ll make my peace with what I know.
Perhaps I’ll venture out tomorrow…
(1) Marcus Aurelius Antoninus 121 AD -
180 AD (Meditations)
