Just a mirror for the sun
scribbles about a commonplace existence.Archive for giving
In loving memory of…
Familiarity does indeed breed contempt. When you live so long with another person, even someone that you deeply love, you begin to see only the faults. So often, especially when we’re young and have time to spend with people we like, we tend to do too much of it. Conversation begins to trickle down to hardly anything and there isn’t much left to discover in each other. Especially when you’re thrown into such close proximity that your lives begin to entwine themselves into each other and turn into a seething mass of emotions that normally would barely get a second glance but with such intimacy, turn into pressing issues that can’t be ignored. And then you forget why you liked them to start with… all the good things that made you love them seem inconsequential suddenly, and all you want is to run as far away as possible but you don’t think you can leave them behind.
So, you leave the compliments unsaid – they already know you love them, right? Or they wouldn’t be so involved in your life. You forget to mention that they look pretty today, or that their work was appreciated. Because you know there’ll be another day, another time… perhaps when they’re less annoying?
And that day fades into nothing. Again, the process of forgetting the good. Humanity has a wonderful way of completely overlooking the positive as commonplace and harping on the negative. And we’re all human. So many times, I meant to say ‘I love you’ or ‘I like the way you’re looking’ or anything at all… Say something.
Apparently that was my grandmother’s advice to my mom – give completely and don’t expect anything in return. Don’t let pride stop you from giving. And one day, when you need it, it’ll wash over your soul. Her last coherent action, the day before she passed away was to pull us all together – my parents, my brother and me – and the look on her face as she saw us all will stay with me as long as I can hold on to it, protecting it from Memory’s wily reach.
Blue October.
It is always that you give. Your thoughts, your ideas, your possessions and sometimes even a bit of your soul. And these things that you value above all else, you give less generously of. Afraid to lose your identity, you barely give at all… closing up into a little shell of bravado, pride and confused emotions. You tie yourself into knots over the smallest of things until the larger picture eludes you completely and you get caught up in the everyday pettiness and the squabbles that never matter.
Soon, days are spent worrying about the thoughts and identity of others. Everything is smeared with the dirty, soiled fingers of memory that insidiously twists reality into little more than a fairy-tale. The non-existent line between existence and perception gives up altogether and heads home.
And then, the stories begin. You hear of your life from the other side and everything that is set in stone has crumbled to dust and left you in the ashes, wondering where the rest of reality went.
This constant rebirth of belief and relationships; the altering dynamics of your interaction with the world around you, has it ever caused you to pause for a second? Or do you flit from one belief to another as soon as the social winds alter their direction? When did you decide to give up all claims to independent thought and begin to exist purely as a product of your immediate universe?
You’d think that an intelligent person would have more brains.
