The Monolith - Part One

Fit for Life is the goal, the new addition will flourish, today is a victory. Fit for Life is the goal, the new addition will flourish, today is a victory. Fit for Life is the goal, the new addition will flourish, today is a victory. Fit for Life is the goal. The new addition will flourish. Today is—

A light flashes bright enough to penetrate my closed eyelids. My hand instinctively forms a visor over my forehead as I open my eyes to look out the car window. I see the railing of the conservation bridge speeding past me, then I look farther, toward the usually lonely creek and green grass below. What is that white tower, wide and crystalline, in the middle of the nature preserve, reflecting sunlight directly at me?

The car keeps cruising on autopilot and the building is quickly speeding away, shrinking in the distance until it looks like a tiny piece of quartz. Now it's gone, vanished behind the downward slope of the bridge, leaving me with nothing but a vague impression of the thing. Where did it come from? When? Why would it appear like that, today, of all days?

Maybe I've just never seen it before. It could be that. Ever since I hired Tiffany, I've been trying to follow her advice to meditate, using my morning drive to work for my attempts. I've been instructing the car to take this path over the conservation bridge, mostly to avoid traffic and ensure a smooth, quiet ride for my meditation. Maybe that's it, the meditation. I could have missed that building before simply because I've always passed it by with my eyes closed. But surely I've driven over that bridge without meditating, I didn't always know Tiffany.

It seems like there's something more to it, something about it appearing today, something about it breaking my meditation like that. No matter. I need to get back into my mantra—but it's too late. My car is pulling up to the Fit for Life Facility.

I have to focus on work, not on meditation, and certainly not on some anomalous tower. The Facility is what matters today. The opening preparations.

I get out of the car near the Achievement center and look at the grounds of the facility below. I think of the new building, not that one by the bridge, but the one we're opening today, the Yoga Center. I think of my months of work leading up to today. I think of how much I need to be prepared, how much I need to prepare everything and everyone else, and I feel myself refocusing.

I know what to do. I'll walk through the grounds of Fit for Life, take it all in. I'll contemplate what I've built and what we're building and what today is for. That will make up for the break in my meditation. That will get me prepared.

I walk down the hill from the Achievement center and it's working immediately. Because I love these buildings, love just being near them, love each one's design and purpose. I love how each one is clean and white—

Except... that color... it reminds me of...

No, my buildings are nothing like that harsh building by the bridge. Besides their large windows, these buildings are neatly beveled and soft, like man-made clouds, stucco clouds designed for human inhabitants and brought down to rest among grassy hills. They're reassuring, not alarming or disarming, because I designed them that way. They're like a counter to that thing by the bridge, because I know what they are and what they're for and what good they do for me and for others.

That's what I needed.

I walk down the winding path and past the Welcome Center, where everything begins. I keep going toward the Fitness Center, where everything is achieved. I stop to admire its large, bulbous design, but I admire more its role as the centerpiece of our efforts. Even this early in the morning, I can see people working on their fitness goals. I take a deep breath and focus on joining them in the spirit of claiming the day.