I have had a number of meetings lately with people I haven’t seen for awhile, some for years, some for decades and have heard news of others I haven’t heard news of for similar stretches, people whose weddings I’ve attended, worked with, or were even distant childhood playmates. Perhaps as I approach my 44th birthday I am recognizing the commonality between these seemingly different people and that largely most everything is rather fragile, from people’s bodies, to their minds, to their relationships, to their lives. Each of these things is easy to neglect and can fall into disrepair in a very short time relative to how long each takes to build. In many cases most of these things were never built correctly to begin with. Happiness and wellness can be as elusive as you have heard. People may be getting older and I guess somehow I thought that all of the pieces would become easier to understand or that our ability to solve these issues would improve, but it just doesn’t seem to be case.

I suspect I am about half way through my life (a little more, a little less), and I don’t think about these things as much as I probably should as I guess I am used to focusing on the matters at hand and what seems to be the always exciting and seductive future. In an era when everything can move so quickly, might I suggest we tend to these things that are so fragile so they do not become more so and actually break. There seems to be a bit of tearing things down swirling around lately and as competitive as I may be, I think that energy could be better spent on building things up. I’m going to start working on that as soon as this plane lands.