We all live in castles in the clouds.
Building our Castles
When we are young, we gather bricks. Each of our experiences is a brick. Each thing we learn is a brick, allowing us to build higher. Whenever we learn something new, it is supported by things we already know. The new blocks are laid to rest atop the old ones.
Over our long lives, we construct beautiful tall towers using thousands of bricks, representing everything we know. These towers take us to great heights. We find ourselves in a castle in the clouds.
When we look down, we can’t always see clearly what’s supporting us. We might imagine we’re being supported differently than we really are. We might find, like coyote in the Road Runner cartoons, that we’re not being supported any more at all.
Tumbling Towers
This metaphor lends itself to a few consequences. What happens if you find out that one of your beliefs is wrong?
If one of our beliefs at the top of the tower is wrong, we can easily replace it with a new belief. We can swap out one brick for another. However, if a brick at the base of the tower is removed, our whole tower can come crumbling down. This is what happens when people question basic assumptions, perhaps like a formerly devout individual questioning their belief in God.
Forgetting: Castles in the Clouds
However, learning that we were wrong is not the only way the foundations of our tower can come under pressure. Over time, even the mightiest of castles is subject to wear and tear. Our memories fade, our bricks erode. And as we age, we may find ourselves holding onto beliefs but not remembering exactly where they came from. We know that we believe something strongly, and we know that there was a reason for believing it, but that reason is now lost to us. Maybe it was something we learned in school as a child, and it made sense when we learned it, but we don’t remember the reasoning anymore.
When this happens, our tower does not fall. We retain our confidence in our beliefs at the top of the tower. But the tower is now floating; it exists in the clouds, but it is not connected to the ground. It isn’t grounded.
We all live in castles in the clouds. It would behoove us to look down every once in a while and see how high we’re floating, and to try to repair some of the bricks that have begun to erode away.