"Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone"

Jorge Luis Borges’s assertion that “Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone” confronts the nature of certainty and the human condition. Life offers no absolute guarantees, no permanent foundations on which to anchor our beliefs, ambitions, or relationships. The “stone” symbolizes absolute certainty, a perfect foundation immune to change or decay. Yet, Borges suggests, such solidity is an illusion. Existence is unstable, with time, chance, and the impermanence of all things eroding whatever we construct.

Despite this inevitable uncertainty, Borges urges a paradoxical necessity: we must proceed as if we possessed solid ground underfoot. Human endeavors, art, love, careers, societies, are undertaken with the hope, sometimes the pretense, that they will last. This imaginative act, of treating sand as stone, is both an act of courage and a practical necessity. To achieve anything meaningful, humans must push forward, create, and commit, even when fully aware that all such efforts might eventually dissolve or transform.

This attitude does not endorse ignorance of fragility; it is not a call to deny impermanence. Rather, it recognizes that even knowing the transitory nature of our constructions, the “sand”, should not lead to fatalism or nihilism. It is in the act of building, striving, and asserting meaning despite uncertainty that life acquires depth and dignity. The quotation offers a model for living with wisdom and hope, embracing uncertainty not as a reason for paralysis but as a condition that makes faith and creativity all the more admirable. The tension between uncertainty and commitment, impermanence and aspiration, forms the essence of the human experience, and Borges’s words urge us to keep building, to live courageously in the face of shifting sands.