Foundations

What is the first impression that comes to mind when you encounter the word, “foundation?” Does your mind go to the money side of things, such as a trust that provides funds for an enterprise? If you are a woman, maybe make-up comes to mind. Or does your mind take a different turn, imagining the footprint of a building and what lies underground? Let us inspect the structural side of things.

When we consider that our lives are built upon experience, every moment feeding into the next, each happening piling on top of the one before like so many bricks. It may not be surprising that we find that while our foundation is good, it may need work from time to time.

If we think of life as a building, even the best foundation may need to be upgraded. Sometimes, we need to poke a few holes in it to run a pipe or a wire. Maybe we need to run some electrical wires, so that we can see better in the basement. Perhaps we will need to patch up a few leaks in the mortar, since material that hold the bricks together can shift or move over time.

The sub-level floors of a structure are called a foundation for a reason. They “stand under” the other levels of what everybody sees. Our life is quite the same, in that there are foundations that we inherit and add with our own experience. If we happen to find that one of our long-held beliefs needs to change, we can change it without making our entire structure fall to pieces.

In fact, we may look at times when we do “crack” or fall to pieces. Those times in life when we come apart, disengage, or get overly emotional, are times when our understanding of things leaves us hanging. We have no other choice with gravity but to fall apart. When we crumble, we must shore up our understanding, or our foundational truths and trusts, all over again and rebuild those relationships.

From our earliest experience or foundational truth, our lives are shaped by what we come to know and understand. Certain experiences are carried with us through a combination of ways. Consider what happens in our earliest times after we are born. We have to adjust to life outside the womb, learning to re-learn from the pre-birth experience to stimulation of our senses that we come to know.

If any of our internal processes is not operating at its best, it will become evident in the external. In a reciprocating way, the external stimuli and experiences feed into our internal memory and are maintained in the many ways our bodies process that data. This is what lies underneath everything we do and what encourages us to be whom and what we are.

We are each as unique as the experiences we have had in our lives. We may understand our own way the best, and we can also use that knowledge to understand the way all of us are. Instead of thinking we are so separate, we grow to rely on our foundation of unity. We must balance the base of our understanding with the way the top of the building may be affected by what goes on in the rest of the world. Dealing with the weather, so to speak.

Deep down, we are all quite alike in many ways, more or less. We all have a fundamental basis, or foundation, to our lives that requires some maintenance. Support for our support, if you will. It is good to keep an eye on how our foundation is holding up, or how we might help improve the understanding of others.

Can you think of any times in your life when you have had your own foundation or understanding supported or changed? How might we serve others in ways that help make them “quake-proof?”

Something to think about.

Click HERE to Connect with your Daily Horoscope!