De reir a cheile a thogtar na caisleain – It takes time to build castles

One of the wise things that wise people I know told me as my wife and I were preparing for marriage was to not expect or try to live at the means we were raised in.  As the encouragement went, your dad might have had land and a nice house with money saved up and retirement right around the corner, but don’t you expect it for yourself right away!

Accumulation of anything usually never happens all at once. Money does not grow on trees and most people never win the lottery.  Land is never free and rare is the person who is bequeathed large tracts of land at the untimely death of some long lost aunt.  Knowledge is always difficult to obtain and you might just have to fail 1000 times at something to achieve that one ground-breaking success.  Yet, castles are built, money is earned, land is acquired and knowledge is learned.

How then is this achieved?  Time is obviously essential.  It takes time to clear the land, and prepare the foundation.  It takes discreet chunks of time to lay every stone and there are a great many stones in a castle!  Even before the construction begins, time must be allotted for the design of the structure, for the gathering of materials and for the hiring of laborers.  Castles do not appear overnight!

And, since castles take time to build and since we are not a people disposed to waiting, patience is a certain necessity.  If you are a king or queen, for instance, and you have schemes for the most magnificently majestic castle fluttering about in your head, a splendid building of beauty and practicality, you still haven’t the power to make the castle simply appear.  The architect must be hired, the plans drawn, the materials gathered, the laborers chosen, the foundation laid, the walls raised and the roof placed and even still the castle must be beautified and decorated and made ready for human occupation.  Without patience, this would be a trying ordeal indeed!

Finally, persistence is vital if you are to see the task through.  In the construction of a castle many things can (and usually do) go wrong.  The designs might be flawed or the materials might be lacking or the labor might be lazy or the work might be shoddy, yet the man who is persistent will see the task through to the final construction of the castle.  He does not quit when the 999 tries nets him zero success.  He persists when unforeseen expenses empty his bank account and when that land he saved up for turns out to be sitting smack in the middle of a flood plain.

Still, there is an over-riding question at play here.  Who enables you to build the castle?  Furthermore, for what reason and for what purpose do you build your castle?  Do you to it for yourself only?  Do you build your castles and your storehouses and tell your soul to be satisfied?  Do you think that you build your castle and save your money and buy your land and learn your knowledge by your own power?  Beware the inevitable destruction that overcomes the things of this earth!  Is your treasure here on this earth, or are you saving up for eternity?