All these human connections.
I’ve really been thinking about the people that have come into my life.
About whether they have been relationships of chance, proximity (convenience), choice, or need. Or a little blend of all?
I’ve had people who stay for a long while – gently nudging at me for a duration and shaping my perception, my memory, my experience.
I have had people that come in quickly and do something so profound and impacting that they have altered me in that very instant.
Then there are the people I find in some ways the most intriguing. The ones that I have spent time next to for days, months, and years that never turned into any direct interaction. Passerbys - people we spend countless hours with and then easily walk away and never look back. People that were there but hardly present at all.
I suppose with some of these people it would be so easy to walk up and start a conversation, bond over location alone, but for some reason we don’t.
It could be that in that particular connection there isn’t a need to be filled. It’s possible that we are just on different life tracks even if we are bound to the same location.
With the passerby there is always the chance that there someone is being affected, just that it’s not mutual. One person noticing in intricate detail another person who is noticing nothing in return at all.
There are plenty of people over the years that I’ve wondered about, that had some sort of impact on me, that might not even know that I exist.
And, there’s a good chance that in life I have been standoffish to people that might have thought or wondered about me – people I may have affected without noticing.
It’s all so strange and delicate – the nature of human connection.
I know I personally have chased after connections that were never going to form. I have been repelled by a lack of mutual need.
I have formed close connections with people years after I pursued the connection. When the mutual need was in place.
I have repelled people years after I aggressively chased a connection because my need was no longer there.
Overall though I find it quite interesting that the person I am today is likely an amalgam of all of these people that have passed by, passed through, or stood by my side.
You meet one person and the thing or the moment you share sticks, then you meet another and the same. You become a mirror reflecting little pieces of the people you’ve met along the way – and they reflect a tiny piece of you.
It’s our defenses, our expectations, our nostalgias, our affinity to smells, to food, to music. All these pieces of the people in our lives and the things we expose each other to.
Not a moment of life is a waste if you put it into perspective. We are changing each other moment by moment, in some tiny and some large ways.
I’ve really been thinking about the people that have come into my life.
About whether they have been relationships of chance, proximity (convenience), choice, or need. Or a little blend of all?
I’ve had people who stay for a long while – gently nudging at me for a duration and shaping my perception, my memory, my experience.
I have had people that come in quickly and do something so profound and impacting that they have altered me in that very instant.
Then there are the people I find in some ways the most intriguing. The ones that I have spent time next to for days, months, and years that never turned into any direct interaction. Passerbys - people we spend countless hours with and then easily walk away and never look back. People that were there but hardly present at all.
I suppose with some of these people it would be so easy to walk up and start a conversation, bond over location alone, but for some reason we don’t.
It could be that in that particular connection there isn’t a need to be filled. It’s possible that we are just on different life tracks even if we are bound to the same location.
With the passerby there is always the chance that there someone is being affected, just that it’s not mutual. One person noticing in intricate detail another person who is noticing nothing in return at all.
There are plenty of people over the years that I’ve wondered about, that had some sort of impact on me, that might not even know that I exist.
And, there’s a good chance that in life I have been standoffish to people that might have thought or wondered about me – people I may have affected without noticing.
It’s all so strange and delicate – the nature of human connection.
I know I personally have chased after connections that were never going to form. I have been repelled by a lack of mutual need.
I have formed close connections with people years after I pursued the connection. When the mutual need was in place.
I have repelled people years after I aggressively chased a connection because my need was no longer there.
Overall though I find it quite interesting that the person I am today is likely an amalgam of all of these people that have passed by, passed through, or stood by my side.
You meet one person and the thing or the moment you share sticks, then you meet another and the same. You become a mirror reflecting little pieces of the people you’ve met along the way – and they reflect a tiny piece of you.
It’s our defenses, our expectations, our nostalgias, our affinity to smells, to food, to music. All these pieces of the people in our lives and the things we expose each other to.
Not a moment of life is a waste if you put it into perspective. We are changing each other moment by moment, in some tiny and some large ways.
Comments