CHAPTER 42
BUILD YOUR BUILDING
When I was little, I had often marveled at the high risings that dotted my city’s landscape. I was opportune to climb to the top of a fifteen storey building once along with my schoolmates. It was tiring since we made use of the stairs. That time, we wondered at how those high rise buildings were built and day dreamed of someday owning such buildings. As I grew and got involved with developing buildings, I understood the many intricacies that characterized getting a building of any nature on the ground. Looking through life as a grown man, I’ve observe that each person is a building of some sort, diverse and unique in some way.
The start of any building project requires that an architectural design is done. An architect is often asked to draw out the plan of the building while an engineer is asked to test the design for strength and ability to withstand the stress or strain that will characterize its use. Everyone that arrives into earth was designed prior to coming in and finished tested for adaptability and capacity to withstand the challenges of earth. You are where you are now because you could withstand the intricacies and challenges that erupted, is erupting and will erupt over the period of your stay on earth. You were actually finished and tested before you were released to be built on this side of life.
Every building has a foundation, the foundation being characteristic of the type of building built on it. The foundation is structured with the capacity to bear the building load. A faulty, inappropriate foundation will mean the building failing or crumbling anytime soon. As human buildings, we each have foundations from which the quality of life we live today, i.e. the building, is structured from. This foundation is characterized by the training from our parents or community, education from our teachers at school, religious trainings from sects, as well as mentorship from mentors. The quality of the training, the foundation, often reveals itself in the results that come after, the success achieved.
You will observe that buildings defer in height based on the nature of the foundation. One will be expecting so much more than expected if he tries to build above the foundation and will be undermining capacity if he builds less than the foundation can carry. The height you can reach in life is equivalent to how much have being put into you during the nurturing or foundational years. The foundation may be solid but that is never enough to conclude the building as complete. Something has to be raised on the foundation. You may have a solid foundation but that is not enough to make you the success you should grow into. You have to continuously work, putting daily inputs towards the actualization of the building.
A solid foundation without solid blocks, composites and irons to support the building may still mean the building is going to fail. You may have gotten the best start at life; you still need the best everyday inputs. You can’t afford to get along with mediocrity in the light that you have a steady firm foundation; you would fail to hit the achievement target. With a firm solid foundation, you can build quality structures that will rise through the skies.
A building is not just the foundation and walls, it requires a roof and finishing. A building does not become complete until a roof is placed over it. The roof is the topmost covering of a building. If you don’t reach the top, you haven’t finished yet. You have to get to the pinnacle where your success is considered complete. The type of finishing given to a house describes the kind of attention that house gets. Finishing is what adds value to a building. You will certainly need to court attention and quality attention by surrounding yourself with quality people and ideas when you get to the top. The top is not for mediocres, it is for those who know value and are ready to get value. Because everyone aims at the top, only keeping yourself valuable by increasing knowledge even at the top will keep you at the top for so long. We never stop learning even when we have attained the highest height there is to be attained.
You are a building, only that the quality of that building will depend on you greatly. Don’t stop till you finish your building. Keep building.