The Beauty of Potential

A crane can be a thing of beauty. I learned this as I was driving past a construction site and for once lifted my eyes high into the sky to meet the head of this graceful metallic creature. My dad being an engineer, I was often forced unto construction sites -- to me the ultimate pits of smoke, noise, and dust, and an abhorred place to visit. I keep away from these places as much as I can help it, and yet for the first time that day I paused to appreciate the grace and ingenuity and basic simplicity of a machine created to birth such beautiful architectural wonders. I saw in it the beauty of potential, and in that yet-empty, yawning space, I saw suspended the awakening dreams of an architect in the invisible tendrils carved out by the moving crane.

Months, or years later, when the building -- whatever it may be, is completed in all its shiny newness, when the noise and the dust has long since faded away, this site will no longer be an annoyance and a hazard, but instead welcomed as a place of purpose and perhaps even beauty. But I will recall this crane and the people who manned it, and remember that they stood for -- in the hot dreary summer days of tiring construction, the beauty of potential and what can be.

The beauty of a fork in the road is that you can go either way. The beauty in a budding flower is in the hope for its blossomed charm. The beauty in youth is in its unfettered opportunity. In ambiguity lives the deepest of potential, and this is something that inspires me every day.