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tecknowWe shape ourselves to the people we love. Some people lose themselves, but even to the fiercely independent, love means growing together with someone. In the eyes of the people we care about is reflected the self that we believe, or at least want to, believe in, or a faith in the world we wish were our own, or a dream we wish to serve and preserve. In their face is real empathy. Their joy is our joy, their sadness is our sacrifice, to help them or because we cannot help them but must watch them be sad alone.
As time, and circumstance, and friendship press us together, grooves in our thoughts form to respond to them, shaped around their faces, their bodies, their voices, their smells, the feel of their bodies, the taste of their feelings. Deep enough to cut us sometimes just by existing, deep enough hopefully to allow them in some way to fill a missing place in our own lives. Deep enough that their dreams, and their feelings, might be reason enough alone to chose one path over another. I've always thought it was very dangerous and foolish, not to mention outside of the rights of a person, to compromise on their path in life because another path offers the company of someone, anyone else.
And sometimes they leave, with good wishes or bad, or sometimes no sentiment at all. What happens to the traces they left on us then? the person is gone, but our place for them is not. Their voices, their faces, their gestures, live on inside us, ready to pull at who we are, but never again to be invoked by their owner. With their match gone, do they cease to have meaning, do they cease to have purpose? Do they become a burden of past experience that no one new can ever share?
Sometimes, if we aren't careful, we can realize suddenly one day that someone else has started to slide into grooves created by someone else. Their laugh, their smile, their speech, reminds us of someone else and the walls between memories, while probably not gone, become transparent and soft. We respond to them because someone else conditioned this response in us. Is this bad? Should it be resisted? Can this be allowed? Can it be good?
If we are not careful to remember, sometimes we forget who left an impression on us. Running our fingers over the convoluted valleys, ridges, pits, notches, and grooves we come to think of the shape as ours alone, and forget that it is the result of a lifetime of contacts, scrapings, checks, pets, and embraces, and life becomes filled with a chorus of feelings whose origins we can't remember, phrases that come to mind we-can't-remember-why, and smells that send us careening into moods without memory to tell us why.
And sometimes we can't forget. Sometimes someone cuts us so deeply that their impression is left indelibly on our selves. For good or ill all that touches the parts of our lives that they touched reminds us of them. Holding a though or feeling in our minds reminds us of them. Sometimes, you don't know who these people are until they are gone.
Other times, all you can do is hope to make the stay as long and sweet as you can, and the break as painless, and hope the part of you that leaves with them is not too much of your heart.
As time, and circumstance, and friendship press us together, grooves in our thoughts form to respond to them, shaped around their faces, their bodies, their voices, their smells, the feel of their bodies, the taste of their feelings. Deep enough to cut us sometimes just by existing, deep enough hopefully to allow them in some way to fill a missing place in our own lives. Deep enough that their dreams, and their feelings, might be reason enough alone to chose one path over another. I've always thought it was very dangerous and foolish, not to mention outside of the rights of a person, to compromise on their path in life because another path offers the company of someone, anyone else.
And sometimes they leave, with good wishes or bad, or sometimes no sentiment at all. What happens to the traces they left on us then? the person is gone, but our place for them is not. Their voices, their faces, their gestures, live on inside us, ready to pull at who we are, but never again to be invoked by their owner. With their match gone, do they cease to have meaning, do they cease to have purpose? Do they become a burden of past experience that no one new can ever share?
Sometimes, if we aren't careful, we can realize suddenly one day that someone else has started to slide into grooves created by someone else. Their laugh, their smile, their speech, reminds us of someone else and the walls between memories, while probably not gone, become transparent and soft. We respond to them because someone else conditioned this response in us. Is this bad? Should it be resisted? Can this be allowed? Can it be good?
If we are not careful to remember, sometimes we forget who left an impression on us. Running our fingers over the convoluted valleys, ridges, pits, notches, and grooves we come to think of the shape as ours alone, and forget that it is the result of a lifetime of contacts, scrapings, checks, pets, and embraces, and life becomes filled with a chorus of feelings whose origins we can't remember, phrases that come to mind we-can't-remember-why, and smells that send us careening into moods without memory to tell us why.
And sometimes we can't forget. Sometimes someone cuts us so deeply that their impression is left indelibly on our selves. For good or ill all that touches the parts of our lives that they touched reminds us of them. Holding a though or feeling in our minds reminds us of them. Sometimes, you don't know who these people are until they are gone.
Other times, all you can do is hope to make the stay as long and sweet as you can, and the break as painless, and hope the part of you that leaves with them is not too much of your heart.
