Make Room For Construction

Around the corner from our apartment on Lower Fifth Avenue, there is a huge hole in the ground. It's in between two stately apartment buildings and across the street from one of the most well-known condo communities in the Village.

I can't see anything that's happening in this hole because of the 10-foot-tall fences wrapped with green material to prevent passersby from seeing inside. But I can hear it. All day, every day.

Each morning, a gate opens, and truck after truck brings more unseen loads into the space behind the green wall. Construction workers block traffic to get the trucks in and out. They reroute traffic to move machinery in one day and out the next.

They make me my dog walker on the other side of the street most mornings, and yet still, there's nothing that I can see from all of this fuss.

But I have to believe that the foundations are being laid for something amazing. I have to believe that the building illustrated in a small picture tapped to the green wall will one day stand where the hole is now. That it will become something that someone will believe was worth the wait and that someone is going to be very proud of what eventually stands in the place of this current construction site.

So much of the essential work required to construct something of significance unfolds in obscurity, where the eyes of others seldom tread. Items enter and exit, elements are added and subtracted, while new tools are introduced and old ones retired. Beneath the surface, a foundation is meticulously laid, pipes are meticulously fitted, and structural enhancements take shape long before bystanders understand.

Then, as if by magic, one day, Voilà!—from what was once a bustling void in the earth, something monumental emerges.

Isn't this the very essence of our journey toward the progress we seek?

Often, we stand alone in our understanding of the intricate machinations at play—the significance of what's to come or what's being removed. We alone sense the growing strength of the foundation upon which towering achievements will be built. Meanwhile, others around us struggle to grasp the unfolding narrative, perceiving only inconvenience as we reroute traffic and redirect pedestrians.

Yet, in truth, this painstaking groundwork is the crux of the collective effort required to erect something truly meaningful.

There's a lot of foundational work happening right now in my life, a lot of work that no one else knows about except for a few people in my crew and on my team.

It is noisy work without much progress visible to anyone passing by and casually looking at my construction site. But the structural support is coming together. The piping is taking its place and connecting to new sources. The foundation is going to be incredibly strong.

And then one day soon, I hope—hell, I know— there will be something tall to show for it and all of the unseen work now will be memorialized in the structure that stands in the place that used to be a construction site.