The Castle Builders
We're really good at building things that don't exist.
We're really good at building things that don't exist.
Dreams. Plans. Schemes. Grand visions of what might be.
Meanwhile, the roof leaks. The foundation cracks. The things we already have break down while we sketch blueprints for imaginary towers.
Jean de La Fontaine saw this human quirk centuries ago:
How many folks, in country and in town,
Neglect their principal affair;
And let, for want of due repair,
A real house fall down,
To build a castle in the air?
The pattern shows up everywhere.
The entrepreneur who ignores paying customers to chase the next shiny idea.
The writer who abandons a solid draft to start yet another "perfect" story.
The relationship that withers while someone chases an ideal that doesn't exist.
We're castle-in-the-air architects, all of us.
But what if we flipped the script?
What if we fixed the roof first?
What if we tended the garden we already planted?
What if we cherished the real house—the one with solid walls and a foundation—before dreaming up turrets and moats?
Real beats imaginary. Present beats someday. Action beats daydreams.
The secret isn't to stop dreaming.
It's to build something real first.
Then your castles can stand on solid ground.
~ aq