Week 3 (To A Crumbling House)

Reading this poem, I couldn't help but be reminded of Ted's house on How I Met Your Mother. Like the speaker in this poem, Ted (the lead character on the show) finds beauty in an old, decrepit house due to the potential he sees in it as a home. The parallels found in this poem to that aspect of the show are so eerily similar it almost makes me think that the writers of How I Met Your Mother based that part of the story on this poem. Perhaps the most significant parallel between "To a Crumbling House" and Ted's house on How I Met Your Mother is the fact that both Ted and the speaker find beauty in these structures because of the connection that the houses have to their lives. Both the speaker and Ted are able to appreciate the "beautiful failures of [their] own design," because the faults in their lives and these houses don't diminish their value, but make them that much more unique. This in turn causes the speaker, as well as Ted to "love the lives [they] built," despite the fact that they, along with the houses in discussion, are falling apart.