Sand Castles and the value of the Journey
In which we wax poetic about the meaning of constructing structures with sand and software
I have always loved making sand castles at the beach and I continue building them to this day, even when my kids don’t feel like joining me.
When I was a kid, making sand castles was a way to wait out the dreaded “time until you can go in the water after a meal”, but the thing is I never stopped doing it.
It got weird during my teenage years, admittedly, when engaging in more girl-adjacent social activities on the beach came to be expected (also by my own physiology-driven internal monologue), but the appeal for me never really stopped.
The meaning of the activity changed over the years: at first it was just play, then it became a challenge (of shape, creativity and even structural integrity), then it morphed into a way to show off skills, then it settled into a personal activity, done for my own pleasure and for no other goal than the journey of building itself.
Now my kids want in on the fun and I teach them what I have learned, but they generally get bored of the activity a lot sooner than me. I continue because it feels therapeutic. There is something zen about the journey of building something that defies gravity and can withstand its own weight simply via hydrogen bonds.
Here’s the thing that I love about sand constructions: I know they won’t last. My goal is to design something in my head and making it happen without it failing. I generally dare to stretch the limits of the medium and sometimes I go too far and the sand shears. But even when I succeed and the result is a physical embodiment of the idea I had in my head, I love the closure of waking away from it and jumping in the water to rinse off.
The cleansing is not just physical but it feels spiritual too: I walked the journey from idea to embodiment if only for the challenge of doing so and no other goal or outcome. There was no external destination.
And yet, often children are mesmerized by these constructions. I routinely collect flocks of little kids around my activity, along with their parents terrified they just might step in and destroy the work. They never do. Their little faces in awe. Pure wonder. I love it and it’s no longer pride, it’s resonance. I see their faces and I see my own world differently because of it. I don’t do it for that, but it enriches the journey, like discovering a patch of wild flowers during a hike.
I have always wished I could treat software the same way I treat sand. I wished little kids understood enough about it to look in awe and reflect the wonder of embodied ideas in software. It’s hard to rule out that open source appealed to me because it felt like a version of that.
These days I find myself surprised when I encounter people that still think of the act of building software as equivalent of chiseling a shape out of marble. It used to infuriate me, now it just feels funny, misplaced. Like somebody that would try to fight the impermanence of sand and water by using cement as the aggregating agent. Sure, it’s possible, but it’s a totally different result and a totally different experience.
Sand construction ultimately teaches me humility in design. The brittle nature of the medium feels to me to be the message. The impermanence feels like the impetus to keep trying and to forgive myself for my failures. The journey is the focus and the center, the balance of it all. The water cleanses and refreshes, and it gives closure and detachment from the creation. Teaches me to let go, to enjoy but maintain distance. To be proud of the journey but let go of the destination.
The reason why kids are in awe is because they understand how meaningful all this is. And I love they keep reminding me.