We are provided so many opportunities within our daily lives to examine and contemplate, yet we most often forgo these offerings, with focus instead turned inwardly upon ourselves, to our racing thoughts concerning the “to-do’s” of the day, our eyes glazed over to the details of the world around us. What do I need to get done? How am I going to fit in that workout? What social obligations are on the calendar and which am I neglecting? Laundry, dry cleaning, dishes, fuck, I need to pack for my trip next week. Where do we let our minds go, who inside of our heads deems what focus is important and what is not? From the bliss of slumber, to checking phones, making mental lists, all in an instant. No time for the simple joys of contemplation, instead focused on the events of the day, the next, the one after that, optimizing, checking, correcting, ever-vigilant, never-ending. But what about the present? Ah yes, the present. I just hope there is enough of it for me to get to work on time today.

But what if we started it all in a different way, in the sort of way I chose to today, by staring out this window, motionless? Not with intent, not looking for some ends, if anything, the inaction was due to my growing distaste for what lies beyond the comforts of my bed. I felt the usual fellow inside of my head, tasked with getting me up and focused, beginning his usual girations, but today, despite his efforts, his voice fell silent to me. Laying in bed, instead only hearing the sounds of my breath as my chest rises and falls, I stared out that window and I began to notice… more. The bricks I had seen every day since I had moved into this apartment, why were they different to me today? Why were they all of a sudden more intriguing? How many of the previous tenants had contemplated anything of these structural beings? Today though, they were all of a sudden fascinating to me. These simple bricks that serve, to most, no additional purpose other than to verify the fact they are still there each day, to check a box, never to be brought to the level of awareness as to be recognized unless they were to stop doing exactly as they were doing, which was nothing. But to me, the mind began a slow wander.

Thoughts of how there was a day, however many years ago, that right outside where my window now stands, a gentleman stood there laying these bricks, one by one. When he laid a few misshapen bricks, or some cement ran over the edge along the way, he surely did not think of the possibility that I, in the year 2020, would be placing my critical eye upon his handiwork. I can’t help but think what this bricklayer of the past must have been thinking as he laid these, what emotions were flowing through him and were now encapsulated inside of these walls. The importance of his efforts to his livelihood, to his life. How he was a part of building the future, a brand new factory building in this growing, industrial part of New York City.

How often do we see ourselves, and that which we are doing, as the penultimate addition to humanity? How blind are we to the reality of the future, however implausible it is to us at the time? Not only in its content, but to the mere fact that all that we know will come and go? The reason I wake up stressed on any particular day, like the stresses of one’s commute on the way to lay these bricks, less than irrelevant, less than a blip, lost forever in the annals of time. It entices the question, what will be in this space in the equivalent amount of years that separate myself from the bricklayer? An even grander building, maybe eight, no, ten stories tall? Or will the thoughts of days past be left to a contemplative fish swimming through two sets of windows, mine now mirroring the windowless features of the factory’s.

My phone buzzes, a quick startled reaction and my mind is back above water, a sudden gasp for air. I find myself back in present reality, the aforementioned fellow in my head has now returned with backup. I concede in the face of his newly assembled team of experts, heavily armed with further reasoning against, and consequences to, my protest of inaction. Now finding myself on the move, enacting the required motions to fulfill my previously agreed-upon contract with society, the one that allows me to live in said condo building, I can’t help but feel a little better for the wear. Those fleeting moments of meditation, like a lullaby to the cacophony of voices in my head, providing me better access to the mute button. Today’s march to the subway isn’t filled with feelings of existential dread or thoughts of downside scenarios, no, today we are looking around, eyes truly open, noticing all of the bricks.