There’s a game that nearly every kid ends up playing at sometime or another. Blocks or cups or rocks get stacked up to form a shaky tower.

Swaying and quivering, its stability is always in doubt.

The young builder then proudly demolishes the tower. A miniature urban renewal. The promise of an upgrade yet to be built.

Often my life has been a shaky tower. Stretching ever upward, the top bits crushing and distorting the earlier parts. Eventually the whole is unable to resist even the slightest disturbance.

Crash. Down it all goes. The past: a jagged heap of sharp edges and dusty debris. The future: a promising but vague vision of things to come.

It has happened many times. Sometimes with jarring suddenness, occasionally long predicted.

Why?

Why this titanic collapse of a life?

The loss of a beloved friend, a job that is little more than a tedious act of daily prostitution, the slow realization that a “friend” has only their interests at heart, the dull dissatisfaction with just about everything. All of these have lead to a painful crash and the hopeful ensuing self-rebuild.

Lesson learned, adjustments made, foundation stabilized.

And the tower starts upward again....