Little one, you have been buzzing in the books,
Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with lawyers
And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been getting an earful of speech from trained tongues.
Take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike
Along sand stretches on the great inland sea here
And while the eastern breeze blows on us and the restless surge
Of the lake waves on the breakwater breaks with an ever fresh monotone,
Let us ask ourselves: What is truth? what do you or I know?
How much do the wisest of the world’s men know about where the massed human procession is going?

You have heard the mob laughed at?
I ask you: Is not the mob rough as the mountains are rough?
And all things human rise from the mob and relapse and rise again as rain to the sea?
— Carl Sandburg, On the Way

These days I see more clearly, and I chafe at certain things that used to wash over me. We learn and grow and become someone hopefully better than the character we were before. Each step is revelatory, each step confronts others with the changes within us. That confrontation is sometimes reflected back towards us in subtle ways. Pokes and prods—just to see if the illusion shatters or if there is a new truth to the story of who we are now.

We rise, relapse and rise again in a lifetime of growth and stumbles, but our story is always set in the present. What has become of us? Where is this going? And just who will join us on our way, and do we dare to wonder—who won’t?

“I am”… I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
— Neil Diamond, I Am… I Said

This restless surge of change relentlessly washes away the sandcastles of fragile identity. We are obliged to rebuild them every day, or we are swept away into something entirely different. Made up of the same substance—nothing but grains of sand in our time, yet no longer the same. Only we know the truth of who we are, only we may hear the call. If we dare to listen.