“When scaffolding falls away, what remains is the house being built within.”
I’m two weeks into a four-year degree, and already I can see the difference between scaffolding and the house. The papers, the readings, the assignments — they’re scaffolding. Important, yes. They give me structure, they stretch me, they hold me up when I’m climbing. But they are not the house.
Scaffolding is temporary by design. It’s made of poles and planks — useful, but never steady enough to live on. It creaks in the wind. It doesn’t keep out the cold. It doesn’t give you a roof when it rains. Scaffolding helps you build, repair, or climb when the structure isn’t stable yet. It’s necessary — but it was never meant to be mistaken for the house.
And yet, we do it all the time. We start believing the grade is the growth, the paycheck is the purpose, the title is the transformation. We set up camp on the scaffolding and forget that it was only meant to be temporary.
The house is the internal work. The messy, slow, ungraded transformation that no one sees but you carry everywhere.
A paper can sharpen thought, but only if I let the words sharpen me.
A paycheck can keep the lights on, but only if there’s still something left when the bills are paid.
But sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes the check barely stretches far enough, and the lights do go out. Sometimes, survival eats all the space where transformation might grow. And when keeping the physical lights on is all you can do, your own light tends to dim.
It’s no wonder we feel disconnected. Living paycheck to paycheck doesn’t leave much room for presence. Standing on shaky scaffolding, just trying not to fall, makes it hard to notice the house being built inside you.
That’s why we need community. Because scaffolding is fragile — grades fall, jobs vanish, economies shift. And if all we have is scaffolding, when it comes down, there’s nothing left. We need people who remind us that the point was never the scaffolding at all — it was the house being built inside and among us.
But connection isn’t easy. When survival is already a full-time job, connection can feel like an unrealistic expectation. Purposeful connection takes energy we don’t always have. Some days, just showing up for a shift or staring down another unpaid bill feels like all we can manage.
So what do we do when the scaffolding feels endless? When there’s no house in sight yet, and the climb itself is wearing us down?
That’s where holding the door comes in.
Holding the door means offering someone a way forward.
Sometimes it’s literal — in the store, arms full, grateful for the pause.
Other times it’s less visible — holding space in a conversation, giving grace in a mistake, letting someone step ahead when they’re running late.
And sometimes, it’s for yourself.
Holding the door for yourself means refusing to shut down the possibility that you still belong here. It means not slamming the exit when you’re tired, not giving up on the chance that tomorrow might hold something different. It’s the choice to keep a way forward open — even if all you can do is leave it cracked.
Sometimes it’s not about holding the door so someone can walk through. Sometimes it’s simply about offering them the space. Holding the door isn’t always a quick gesture for ourselves or others — it can be a way of communing. A quiet acknowledgment that we’re in this together, that the threshold is big enough to hold more than one.
And yes, sometimes you end up holding the door for a long time. There has to be discernment about that — when to keep standing there, when to step back. But even holding it once can be enough. It means the door can stay cracked, even if only a tiny bit, and that crack is still hope.
Because when the scaffolding comes down, what’s left isn’t a grade or a paycheck.
It’s you — rebuilt, still unfinished, and more whole than you were before.
And if there’s nothing left, it’s the community around you that helps rebuild the house.
This is a recognition I need to visit consistently. Otherwise, I’ll get tricked into thinking the scaffolding is the point. It’s not. The scaffolding is temporary. The house is what lasts. And along the way, holding the door — for myself and for others — is how I remember I’m not building it alone.
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