John R. Miles

It will wash away the moment the weather turns.

You need the friction.

You need the grit.

You need the willingness to press firmly.

In ancient quarries, builders knew a secret.

Skimpy application leads to cracks that time only widens.

A thin, hesitant layer of mortar

might look fine today, but in 50 years, the weight of the structure will cause it to fail.

However, a generous, committed spreading creates joins that endure for dynasties.

In our lives, the same principle holds.

We apply meaning when we show up fully in our relationships.

not just when it's convenient, but when it's hard.

We apply it when we mentor others without needing the credit.

We apply it when we circulate our presence and our resources with the specific intention of making the whole stronger, not just our own stone.

We apply it when we honor the sacred, those deep, unshakable rights and wrongs that define the core of our architecture of significance.

even if it costs us our flexibility, our speed, or our comfort.

The cost of conviction is the grit in the mortar.

Without it, connections crumble under pressure, but with it, meaning seals the architecture against isolation's erosion.

This application is what finally bridges the individual to the collective.

It turns the me of solo ambition into the we of shared strength.