When I was a kid my favourite pastime was playing with Lego. You could say Lego was to me then what Blues Over Troubled Waters is to me now. It took up a lot of my free time. In Bahrain in those days all the shops would have their sale in the months of May and October. I remember waiting with eager anticipation for these two months of the year only because the Lego would be cheaper and it wouldn't pinch my dads pocket as much. And that is how I would get a new Lego set twice a year. This went on till my Lego occupied half the room if I took all of it out. A time came when I was building huge things like airports and military bases and even aircraft carriers. But there was a problem. The new bricks were nice and shiny and sharp around the edges, whereas the old ones would invariably be dull and worn out with so much use. And the problem really was that I could not build something big unless I used both the old and the new pieces. But the old bricks made whatever I was building look shabby, so I would try to use as many of the new ones as possible and put the old ones in places where they were not so conspicuous. But there was no way I could avoid using them altogether ... not if I wanted to build something grand.

I had just finished reading AB's post on friendship when it occurred to me that the people in our lives - the ones we take for granted - are like old Lego. A person is always going to meet new people and make new friends, but like Lego, just the new is usually not enough. It will keep you happy for a while, but soon a time will come when you'll feel the need for some of the older bricks ... which you won't have if you've gone and thrown them away.

Reason I'm writing is because a friend very dear to me gives me the feeling I no longer fit into the life he is trying to make for himself. I am an old Lego brick that doesn't gel with the new. But he forgets he would not have elolved into the person he is today if it wasn't for the role I and many others like me have played in his life over the past so many years. He forgets the people who lent him money when they had very little of it themselves; he forgets the people who went out of their way to visit him in that hell-hole he was living in only because they didn't want him to feel left out. And surely enough it was those very people who helped him shift to more comfortable lodgings. I can go on, but there is no use.

The parable of the Prodigal Son comes to mind. When someone wants to go, let them.

***

All this talk about Lego got me thinking about how much I wanted to be an architect when I was growing up. I remember reading articles in the Readers Digest about the great Walter Gropius and Bauhaus, and about I.M. Pei (who designed the glass pyramid at the entrance to the Louvre in Paris). I wanted to be like them; I would study at the Harvard School of Design and build the worlds greatest structures. But it never happened.

They call it makhtub - what is written is written.

.... What do they know?

Peace, love and invisible ink.