Proverbs

We all want to find our people, and we could all be our people if we opened our hearts. But I can count on one hand the people who have really seen me – who cared enough to listen without inserting themselves. And I can count on one hand the people I’ve listened to and seen.

We fall in love with strangers who pass us on escalators, and they fall in love with us, but the spell is so tenuous, any contact will break it. Our self-protection and distrust only lead to secure loneliness.

You’ll never know when she stepped out of the car and smiled, how her beauty broke my heart. Her long legs and short shorts – you can see through her shirt. It’s funny how the clothes we wear reveal us, like how the masks we hide behind show who we really are. 

There’s one thing we want more than anything else, and we can get everything else, but we can’t get it. And what’s better: the frustration of never getting what you want, or the disillusionment of getting it and realizing it isn’t what you want?

We are like fish living in a tank when we were made for the ocean. Our hearts are too large for this world to satisfy, but we keep trying because it seems like it’s all we have. 

I want everything: fame, anonymity, opulence, minimalism, the mountains, city, and sea. I want to live every iteration of life, and for it to never get old or end. But time passes too quickly – heartless, relentless, always forward. I will never be seven again, I will never see my grandfather again. 

I don’t have time to figure it out. I try to answer the philosophical questions that grow like weeds in my mind. But every time I think I’ve almost got it, I look up and see I’ve only dug myself deeper into the dark recesses. I’m always diving deeper, trying to find the bottom from which to push off, thinking I can climb out the same way I climbed in.

Everyone goes about the day as if it’s somehow fine, and we aren’t all dying. We exchange time for money so we won’t die, but we lose the time and die anyway. I wonder what will surprise us in that moment. The petty triviality of our stress and worries? The absurd complexity and demands we imposed on ourselves? Death, as Sparrow said, has a way of reshuffling one’s priorities. How do I live with those priorities now?

Every past day is so precious, I would go back to it if I could, hold my people, and love them. But today feels so common, I drown in the dullness of routine and the noise of distraction, ambition, and fear.

Instead of cherishing and enjoying what I’ve been given, I want more, though it will never be enough. And I fear losing it, though it hasn’t satisfied me yet. Greed and fear. These are the unholy gemini, the root of all motivation, the root of all evil.

It’s weird how we concern ourselves with the destination, as if there is one. All of our stories are cut short, and all we ever have is the journey – the path we’ve walked, and the marks it leaves on our body and soul.

I wish we could all get to where we want to go, be who we want to be, do what we want to do. But we bring ourselves along and we are the enemy.

Your pain is different than mine, but we all have a burden no one else can know, baggage we carry and exchange. 

We all want to find our people, and we could all be our people if we opened our hearts.

J.

Sept. 16, 2020