Purpose in Buildings

About ten minutes walk away from my house, there is a large abandoned grain factory. The windows are boarded up. Rust hangs from the various pipes around it. I don't know what they use to carry.

The factory is not pretty. It's a great big concrete block with some brick bits poking out of the side. It is covered in graffiti and the grime from being positioned just off the main road in and out of the city. It is just a big lump in the middle of a field.

A couple of miles away, there is a ruined nunnery. I actually find it rather nice to look at. It was destroyed in the reformation by King Henry VIII, then made into a residence of a local noble family, before being badly damaged in the civil war and abandoned. Since then it was used as a source for stone by local villagers. Now it is pretty much just a big stone shell with bits taken out of it, smoothed down by the weather. It is the kind of place you hear ghost stories about, but, having been there at night, it really isn't that scary. Sure, it's eerie, but it isn't anymore so than another place at night, away from people and bright lights. I find it sad actually. A dull sadness, softened like the building by the expanse of time between me and when it had its purpose.

I'm not a believer in divine purpose, or destiny, or that we were put on Earth for an external reason. Buildings are different. Unlike humans, they are delibrately created. They are given a purpose. And I actually like that. Having a purpose simplifys meaning, makes things easier to understand. I sometimes would like for there to be a purpose for our existance. Something to act as an anchor, to say "This is why I am here!"

We don't have that. But the things that we create, buildings and tools, do. We make them for a reason.

Which is why the grain factory freaks me out far more than the nunnery. The nunnery's original purpose has been lost long ago. I have no way of knowing what that purpose was without further research. At first glance, it could just be that someone decided to dump a bunch of stones in that place.

But the grain factory...now that is different. It has structure. It has a clear purpose to its existence. The machinery, the great chimney that sits on the roof, it all points to there being a reason for its existence, its purpose.

The machines are silent. Its purpose has gone, but I can see it, and I can see the parellels to me, and it scares me.