Life is rather like the earth; starting with nothingness, over time you acquire layers; family, friends, and experiences. As you make another friend or have another experience, the layers become compacted down under the weight and become as hard as rock.
Upon this foundation is money, money is rather like sand, if don’t you have enough no matter how hard you try to keep hold of it, it always slips through your fingers, and no matter how thinly you spread it you can’t make a beach. If you have a beach it’s so ubiquitous and expansive you sit on it not fully appreciating its there, or the fact that it’s being constantly eroded away by the sea. If you have a beach there’s always more sand to build castles.
The beach is your launch pad; this is where you catch your thermals of luck, opportunity and situation. If you’re climbing, the exhilaration is breathtaking, so much so it’s difficult to imagine what a fall will be like, you may even reach heights where it’s best not to know how far you could drop, because it’ll hurt so much. If you’re up there, you might as well get on and enjoy it. You can, if you like, cruise at a comfortable altitude, the risk of falling isn’t as great, but neither are the rewards. It’s not always your choice as to which you end up doing.
And falls do come, from whatever height, the thermal gives way and you begin to return back to the ground. Sometime it’s faster than others, sometimes it’s just an air pocket and you drop for a short period of time, catching another thermal to return to where you were. Sometimes you’re shot down, and you wonder why it’s you, and not others who have hit the ground so hard.
Back at the beach, you talk to the sand for advice, move it around and pile it up to build a platform you can take off from, but it’s too flimsy and you can never get a good footing, you become super conscious that it is being eroded away by the sea and there’s nothing you can do about it. In short the sand is useless. The wind is still and launching back into the sky seems too distant and improbable, rather like going to the toilet in a rowdy pub, you sit there wondering how you do it normally, but no matter how much you think about it, nothing happens. It becomes necessary to dig in the sand and you realise that in fact there isn’t an endless supply it just seems that way. You begin to dig, and dig, and you don’t get far before your hitting rocks of your family, friends and experiences.
The rock is always there, it hardly ever changes, whether your high in the sky, digging in the sand, or cruising at low altitude, it’s always there, the opinions of you don’t change, the support doesn’t waiver. When you hit the ground and begin to dig, you think you’ve hit the bottom and there’s nothing left. When hit the rock, you realise there’s still along way to go until nothingness.
