What We Leave Standing

#MondayLetters?

Cher ami,

My teacher would always tell me that the trick to learning anything was to break it down. I would laugh and tell him that if this were true, my brothers and I were experts in this philosophy. You see, growing up, almost everything in our house was broken down — let’s not call them accidents, let’s call it curiosity. Maybe we were trying to understand how the television worked, or how the window mechanism moved, or perhaps the mystery of the sockets fascinated us too much to leave them alone.

In our defense, maybe we were trying to learn, or perhaps we just had too much energy to contain. Either way, what followed was always the same: My father would march into the room, belt and tools in hand, and force us to fix what we had broken. That’s where the problem was — we had mastered the art of breaking things down, but we didn’t know how to build them back up.

As I grow older, I think about that often. We were kids then, dismantling things out of sheer curiosity. But curiosity is only half of the equation, isn’t it? We spend so much time learning how things work by taking them apart, but rarely are we taught how to put them back together, how to build.

I see now that life doesn’t just ask us to break things down. It demands that we build things up — relationships, dreams, communities, even ourselves. And I’ll be honest: building is hard. Breaking something apart is instinctual, a reflex of wanting to know more. But building? Building takes intention. It takes patience and faith in the outcome.

Right now, I’m learning to build. I’m learning to build a relationship, and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever done. The ease with which I used to disconnect myself from things has faded. I no longer want to keep breaking things down, especially when it comes to love. Love is fragile, complex, and far from the clean edges of a television we once tore apart. There’s so much more to lose if I break it down too quickly.

You know, I keep asking myself, what skill is more useful — the ability to break things down or the ability to build them back up? Both serve their purpose, no doubt. But in this moment, I am realizing that life rewards the builders. The world expects you to build — not just careers or houses, but families, friendships, and futures. To build is to commit, to risk imperfection, failure, and still press forward.

Everywhere I turn, there are things to be built. Whether it’s a foundation of trust with a friend, a family that will one day rely on you, or a dream you thought was too distant to touch. The work of building is never-ending, but it’s a work that matters. It’s hard, and yes, sometimes the pieces don’t fit as neatly as you hope, but building means you’re invested. It means you care enough to leave something standing after you’re gone.

And so, I’m on a learning journey. I am still the same boy who wanted to know the inner workings of everything, but now I’m more interested in how to create something that lasts. The curiosity is still there, alive and well, but I know now that what we build defines us far more than what we break down.

As we all grow older, may we learn the delicate art of leaving something standing — something I think, in the end, is what truly shapes our lives.

- Dee