The Building Blocks for a Meaningful Life

Last night at a reception celebrating the value of higher education, the speaker spoke about providing kids with the building blocks for a meaningful life. She was speaking about integrating separate academic disciplines into tangible cross functional coursework that prepares students for real world challenges. Multidisciplinary studies constantly shifting in this ever-changing world.

Wow. But my mind immediately slipped back to the age of six, and my childhood home on Long Island, where usually, on a Saturday afternoon, with a fire roaring in the fireplace, my Dad and I would build a castle, or a fort, or a village out of my wooden building blocks. My Matchbox cars were nearby in their navy portable carrying case, ready to drive through the gate, over the moat or down the newly paved driveway. Long before Legos and Playmobil, my building blocks taught me to imagine.

This memory is accentuated with the Texaco Metropolitan Opera Broadcast blaring in the background, If the Metropolitan Opera was in season: (Fall, Winter and Spring) listening to the opera was a given. For every Saturday, instead of college football, my Dad had the opera playing on the radio. At a later age, I remember not really wanting my friends to come over on Saturdays, in fear that the opera would scare them away, but that is another story.

Building Blocks. I remember having a variety of sets:  

• The classic square cubes with letters of the alphabet, two ridged sides and simple corresponding pictures that started with the same letters found on the block. 
• A multitude of large, lightly wooden dominos, about 6 inches by 2 ½ and colored dots.
• A wonderful set of primary colored building blocks with arches, and triangles, and posts.
• A puzzle set of blocks that created six different pictures. These were a favorite of Pepper, our Cairn Terrier, as today many from this set have chewed edges and corners.

And over the years, all these blocks were kept mixed together in one big  basket, or a large red Popcorn Factory tin, or probably if I want to be true to my six year old memory, a cardboard box, which my mother had reinforced and then covered in contact paper, (in the 60s, there was a lot of contact paper) and always that box of blocks remained nearby in the den, or what we called the sunroom.

While Tosca, Brunehilde, or Violetta always seemed to be screeching her angst in the background, I remember my Dad on his knees building. And typically that meant I sat and watched, or handed him a corresponding block to keep our structure symmetrical. See there you have it… the first grand example of needing symmetry in my life and later yearning for just the opposite. It all came from those early days of watching my Dad play with my toys and his compelling need to build in a traditional classic style, thereby creating order and beauty to our play project. So was it my building blocks that taught me to appreciate Classic Greek architecture and then later the modern asymmetrical aesthetic, or the many art history classes I took in college? 

About a year ago, I was back at my parents’ home, and I knew my wooden blocks would still be in that large red Popcorn Factory tin and went about looking for it, eventually found in storage in the basement, next to Carol and my old wooden toy chest, and the packed boxes of my Texaco trucks. Inside the toy chest I found our board games: Life, Monopoly, Scrabble, Mindbender, Chinese Checkers, Battleship, a few jigsaw puzzles and Cooties.

And I knew when there were younger children in the neighborhood; Mom would keep the red tin of building blocks on the first floor and bring them out when children came to visit. But times change and there weren’t many children around the hillside and the red tin had been relocated to the cold cellar. And inside the sets of blocks were now neatly arranged by set in ziploc bags. I examined all and then just like a kid, I selected a few sets and scurried up the wooden staircase and packed them in my suitcase to bring back to Seattle. They now sit in a oval wooden shaker basket right next to my grandparents’ mahogany hifi cabinet, long since rebuilt to serve as a nifty liquor cabinet. Building blocks as vintage décor? Building blocks for a  meaningful life? Or, as some would prefer, now just dust collectors? 

So back to the last night, there I sat, my mind stumbling on this concept of the building blocks of life, and cross functional disciplinary course work. The speaker was clearly speaking about the value of a liberal arts education and preparing young adults for life and career success, but I preferred to go back in my head and think about a few bigger things fundamental to my core, that have served me well. The “Yes Ma’am, No Ma’am, Thank You, Please and write your thank you notes” kinds of foundation. These were my building blocks. Some important principles that contributed to who I am today.

Build communities and then nurture them as if they were a garden, and fences make good neighbors.

Give thanks for the food on your table. Eat an apple a day to keep the doctor away. And eat in the dining room. 

Take pride and care for each other. Look out for your sister or your pet and your friends. 

Raise the flag and love your country. 

Always remember the mixing bowls principle. Look for the commonality of humanity and not the differences. Pull out a set of mixing bowls and find one large enough to contain everyone’s common core beliefs and once you do,  create the opportunity for an enlightened reconciliation where once there was dissension.

Spend the afternoon playing with toys and imagine what you can create.

Exercise. Read. Laugh. Apologize. And every so often, on a Saturday listen to the opera. Always keeping a melody in your heart. 

Your word is part of your character and keep your promises. 

Just a random few, but I guess these are what I consider the building blocks of my life. I sorta like my memory of building blocks better. They are more playful, and basic. 

When I look down on the floor and see my childhood blocks as décor, I ponder about where they all came from, did Mom and Dad go out and buy all of them, or were some gifts from others? Who contributes to building our foundations, our ability to think creatively, our power to imagine? And do we share our blocks so others can learn similar lessons?

So now, my building blocks make me smile. Maybe that's why I went searching for them last year. What was I am really looking for? When I see these blocks, I get grounded again around the simple life lessons learned as a child, the lessons we were encouraged to embrace in order to enhance and shape our character. 

I'm going make a better effort to keep the dust off them in the future.