Walking to Metro this morning I noticed a rubble-strewn lot where a block of low-slung buildings used to be. They were ugly little buildings but still … they existed — and now they do not.

Change is our reality, our destiny, what must be embraced.

I wonder if walking helps us better withstand the inevitable comings and goings of life? Not that there’s anything especially marvelous about walkers, of course, but because we are bopping around all the time we are also looking around all the time. We notice the old cars and the new shutters. We see the world in all its transitory glory.

The empty lot I passed today will one day be an apartment or office building, part of the new development taking place near the Reston Wiehle Metro station.

Or take this scene. Every day construction workers dismantle more of the barrier wall for I-395 near my office. Eventually they will install steel beams and girders and a new neighborhood will rise over the top of a busy highway.

Now you see it and now you don’t. And walkers see it (or don’t see it) first.