John R. Miles

If the winner's curse is the anxiety of overpaying for a life that doesn't fit, then the process that follows is the piece of finally becoming part of something larger.

Once the choices are made and the stones are set, the work of the hands ends and the miracle of the bond begins.

So far, we have mixed the mortar and the pit.

We have applied it with the grit of our sacred values.

We have watched it set through the weight of our intentional choices.

Now we reach the final and perhaps most mysterious stage of the process, the cure.

In the world of ancient masonry, curing is a quiet, invisible process.

Most people think it's just the mortar drying out, but it's actually a sophisticated chemical reaction.

It isn't just losing water.

It's a transformation where disparate ingredients, lime, sand, and minerals,

bind together into a single stone-like substance.

This is the stage where the ingredients stop being a list of parts and start being a unity.

In your life, the cure represents the moment when your fragmented efforts finally stop feeling like work and start feeling like belonging.

This is the stage

where the quiet disorientation we talked about at the top of the episode finally begins to fade.

You are no longer just a cog in a machine, an actor on a stage, or a bidder in an auction.

You have become a bonded contributor to a structure that is bigger than yourself, a legacy that can finally stand on its own.

What's fascinating about Cured Mortar

is that it doesn't try to hide the gaps between the stones.

It doesn't try to pretend the wall is one solid monolithic piece of rock.