Life is the sum of all your choices.
~Albert Camus
What was it about that wall that caused me to turn around and photograph it? Tucked along a quiet street it faced me. And I suddenly got it. “That is me,” I thought. A jigsaw puzzle of large and minuscule chunks of life each settled into each other like they were destined to be side-by-side life partners. How evenly uneven each crevasse buttressed the one above and below. As if meant to be as such—so disparate and yet working so well together. If one small rock or larger bolder would be absent the wall couldn’t stand up against the weathering seasons with such strength and purpose. Each has a place within the design of it all. Life moves around and within it embracing each chiseled-out choice with an almost indecipherable velvety green moss as sinewy vines wrap through and over it like a lithe dancer. As if to say all is forgiven. It wasn’t so bad now was it? And guess what? It’s still growing and thriving.
That wall is me. All the roads I travelled less and more are me. All the choices—both ridiculously awful and awfully brave are me. All the passion and heartache and wins and losses and celebrations and devastations. They are all mine. All my answers to infinite questions were staring back at me on that quiet street. I picked them. I carved them. I lined them up to line my path. A simple wall holding up what? Built there to protect or cover or elevate what? I’ll never know.
All I do know is that the wall reflected the sum of all that I chose and continue to choose and there is great beauty and strength and wonderment in how it looks when seen through a broader perspective. No matter how disappointed or surprised or bewildered I may be just being me, I can celebrate the fact that I’m still standing through this all-ness of being human. And it’s made me better because of and in spite of my rocky choices. I do so agree with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when he said, “It has done me good to be somewhat parched by the heat and drenched by the rain of life.”
And so it has.
