It’s been a while.
But, I’m back.
Back from the incessant tribulations and trials that is life as a student in 2011. Yes, I am studying what I am most passionate about, which is probably more than could be said for some, but even passionate flames dim in the mist that envelops our lives from time to time. And it’s that flame that lights the way for me in everything I do on a daily basis. It’s my guiding sceptre to cross through the valley of the shadow of death.
And it’s when that little flame dims that I start becoming unsure of where I want to go next, and inadvertently, I can lose sight of where I am, who I am and what I am.
The term “ruin” is one of my favourite words in the English language. Not only do I appreciate the phonetic quality that it possesses, but up until a month ago, I have always had a fascination with ruins of any kind. It has always interested me as to how they became the ruins they are today and I always try to imagine how they looked before they were ruined.
That’s not the right word, though, is it?
‘Ruined’?
Ruined refers to something losing complete means, position or hope.
And more often than not, this is not the case with most ruins, is it?
Life is a constant construction site. At any given time, we are building houses, structures, friendships, careers, relationships, children, finances, reputation and so on and so forth.
And from our Sunday School days we have learnt to always build our houses on strong solid foundations. ‘Build your house on the rock and you will prosper’, my teacher would say. ‘Don’t build your house on the sand like the foolish man’.
And so we would find the most fantastic mound of rock and we would start building on that firm foundation. Even heavy rains couldn’t knock us down. We weather the storms, we fight the hurricanes and we survive the tsunamis, because our house is built on the rock, like the wise old proverb teaches us.
But then the earthquake hits.
We run around our shattered dream of a sturdy structure and we yell and we scream and we curse and we wonder why we had never made provision for an earthquake – something so intense it has cracked and broken the core of what our structure was built on.
Maybe the earthquake in our life was the scandal we had thought no-one would find out about, the time we cheated on our spouse, the time and money we invested in the wrong enterprise, the time we became friends with the wrong person or even something as small as that time when we stayed quiet when we should have said something or that time when we said something when we should have stayed quiet.
And suddenly we are faced with the ruins of what once was.
And it’s heart-wrenchingly painful – to see the hard work of many years lying in ashes and dust in front of you.
Suddenly you are infuriated at the thought of all of the hurricanes and tsunamis and heavy rains and howling winds that you faced – all of which, now, seem so pointless.
And for a while, there is what is commonly called, the mourning period. The introspective look at how we built wrong, how we might have caused this. The amount of times that it is the fault of the builder is about equivalent to the amount of times it had nothing to do with the builder.
And then comes the big question: does one start afresh somewhere else or does one start rebuilding the ruins, fixing and mending and restoring to its former glory?
My dear readers, this is the question that has been the dagger in my chest for the past 3 weeks.
Sure, I used to love ruins, I loved admiring them. But they were other people’s ruins.
There is something so different about watching your own. It makes it almost impossible to not feel like the world has crashed down alongside your structure.
Therefore, for a while, the first option felt like the best choice. So we start on a clean slate of solid base, making sure that this base is stronger than the one before, and we build a bigger and better structure and we forget about the ruins, the lost memory of the former structure we used to have. Except maybe once a year or so, we go to visit it to remind ourselves where not to go wrong in the future.
We learn from it, but we move on, we start again.
It can be immensely difficult, because we have become so use to the comfort of the location where the ruins now lie, but we ‘suck it up’ and we go on.
I decided that this would be the best choice at first.
I was going to leave the ruins to decay into its own infinity and after that I would never allow it to remind me of its guilt, judgment, shame, dignity or integrity.
I am very good at getting up and moving on. This is something I have learned about myself. Life hasn’t gotten me down yet, it hasn’t pushed me down into its deepest dungeons of despair just yet, and for that I am thankful. But, if ever I should be pushed down there, I am sure I will find my way back again soon.
I might just stay there a while for a moment of indulgence, but that’s neither here nor there.
So, I resigned myself completely to starting the building process somewhere else, using the lessons learnt.
But after a while I realized a huge disadvantage to a new location.
With the old structure, at least I knew what I was up again and I had an approximation of where the boundaries to my structure’s strengths were. With the old structure, I knew that it would take another earthquake to break.
What was it going to be with this new location?
A heavy wind, some rain?
Was I really willing to go through every thing I did before just so I didn’t have to be faced with the mistakes I made on the previous construction site?
And it was then that the notion of ‘ruins’ and ‘ruined’ came to mind.
I was starting to think about the ruined building, the cracked foundation and the hopeless efforts of the house to rebuild itself. And I realized that what I had here was the remains of a once glorious structure, a majestic construction that took blood and sweat and tears to complete.
And it was in ruins.
But it wasn’t ruined.
Let me explain: to be in ruins means to be totally destroyed and unfit for the intended purpose. However, ruined means that is in decay without means, position or hope, right?
So it was then that I came to the realization that my building wasn’t ruined.
It had hope, it had potential, I would just have to pick up the pieces and start again, on the same location.
At least with my ruins, I knew what it could withstand. I knew its strength and I knew its weaknesses.
And maybe the ruins of my once majestic structure have taught me this: that every building has the potential to fall and to break. But it also taught me that, even after the toughest earthquakes, we can rebuild.
I have started picking up the pieces again, I’m not sure how long the building will take, but I know that when it is done, it will be a building that has been built, with the knowledge and experience from before, invested in its every fibre.
Here’s to you, reading this.
I hope it has answered some questions.
