The bricks we build our home with

Inertia — Nº188

We carry them where we go, these bricks of our making. Some of them we inherited—so they are weathered and worn. Passed through the epochs like old stories that never quite fade. Others, we crafted ourselves. Moulded using the clay of our past and fired in the kilns of our choices.

Each brick is akin to a porous recollection of emotions that may be helping or hindering us in the long run. There’s the brick of first heartbreak, always rough around the edges. The brick of childhood shame, now smoother from years of turning it over our hands and getting more comfortable with it. And the bricks of fear, permeated with the whispers of “you’re not enough” which feel deceptively light in some ways but also can be the heaviest of the load.

We carry them all, convinced they are the only materials we have to build with. And so we build on them. Again and again. The same walls rising around us wherever we go. We recite promises to ourselves—this time will be different. Perhaps you’re in a new city. Or a new job. Or a new love. New life, but our hands remember the old patterns. Before we realise it, we’re standing in the same rooms we tried to leave behind. The ceiling, still hanging too low. The windows, still facing the wrong way. The doors, still creaking in their frames.

The simple truth I’ve tried to dodge many times is that changing the land won’t change the house. We can cross oceans. Change our names. Re-lay our surfaces. But what difference does it make if we build the same shelter for the same shadows?

In 1914, a man named Frank Lloyd Wright (bit of a crazy history, but that’s for another day) was away working in Chicago when a servant set fire to his home and took his family and life’s work. Even with all of this and the press fixated on his relationships, he didn’t just rebuild and trace the old foundations of Taliesin—he used grief to carve a new concept and bring back the Taliesin. Even after a second fire, Wright rebuilt Taliesin into the National Historic Landmark it is today. Frank now stands as one of America’s most historic 20th century architects, penning over 1,000 structures in 70 years including the Guggenheim Museum in New York. He grew famous for expounding the phrase “organic architecture”, which harmonises buildings with its inhabitants and their environments.

The walls we live in are the structure of our mind. The real work isn't in the building. It's in the bricks themselves. It's in lifting each one. Realising its weight. Questioning it. “Does this still serve me?” Is it holding a truth, or just habit? Protection, or prison? Some bricks are worth breaking. Others you might reshape and repurpose. And some… some of them you can lay by the roadside, thank them, and walk on lighter.

With more capacity, you can gather new bricks. One brick of self-compassion; soft on the outside but surprisingly strong inside. One brick of boundaries; clear as glass but solid as stone. And one brick of possibility—iridescent with hope. It doesn’t stop there. You may also learn to mix different mortar. One made up of patience and trust in your own hands for once.

This is how you build differently. Not by changing locations but by changing what you carry. Not by running from the old but by accepting it and choosing what to carry forward. The house you build tomorrow will always reflect the bricks you choose today.

Before you pack up and move again, before you mark the foundations of your next attempt at starting a new chapter, look at what you’re carrying. Don’t let the same hands build old walls. Learn to build new ones, and then use them to build bridges.

Your next house is waiting in asking the right questions.