Foundations and Termites

I don't think anyone realizes it at first, but from the second we're born, we are making foundations. At the start it's nothing special, maybe one measly plank on the ground.

But it gets bigger.

Throughout our whole lives, we make a foundation to stand on. Slowly making it sturdier, we keep building it up until it's a mighty, fortified tower. And even then, we keep building.

It's a foundation built on memories. Experiences. For some people, it works out just fine. They stand on top of their foundation, proud of their work.

And then for others, they build just like the rest. But one day, a termite comes along. The termite wedges itself at the bottom of the foundation, and begins to eat away at it. 

The foundation begins to rot. You can't tell at first, but before you know it, everything is out of your control. You don't want to acknowledge how the termite has caused the foundation to fester and wither away. Because that would negate all of your hard work. It would force you to restart. And that seems so unfathomably impossible, since you don't even remember when you started building in the first place.

Everything gets shredded up, eaten, And finally, as you desperately cling to the edge, it crumbles apart. And you fall. And it's an endless fall, and you're waiting for it all to end, you're anticipating how hard the ground hurts, you go and you go and you go until you THWACK onto the ground.

You roll over onto your back, and look up into the sky, seeing how everything you've done is in vain. It's no use rebuilding. It'll take an endless amount of time to make up for what that stupid little termite did.

It's always easier to give up. At any moment in your life, you can give up. Even with a strong, tall foundation, you can always give up. And it's a tempting, overwhelming thought.

But you can't do it.

For whatever reason, you can't do it. Maybe it's guilt, maybe it's yearning for more, maybe it's just the natural instinct to survive. It could be anything.

You get pulled between giving up and rebuilding. And just when you're about to end it all, you realize that if you're at the very bottom, there's nowhere to go but up. There's nothing to do except build up again, because it can't get worse than it already is.

If you rush, your foundation won't be sturdy. And it's so easy for it to collapse all over again. So you take it slow. Even if that seems hard to do. Over time, before you knew it, the foundation is just as it was before. But you have to be careful, because that termite might come back.

And if it does, you have to catch it before it starts to rot everything all over again. Even if it means lowering yourself to confront where the termite lies, so you can kick it away with your boot.

It might eat away a bit of your foundation. But when you lower yourself, you can always pull yourself back up. And rebuild. If your entire foundation breaks, building yourself back up is much, much harder.

thanks for reading if you did

-zwee