Getting to know someone is an intimately fluid process. There is a dynamic that forms between two people as they begin to forge whatever sort of relationship they will eventually grow to have.
Some people start spilling their deepest darkest selves from the moment they meet someone they want to get to know, believing closeness and trust is only built by exposing themselves and being vulnerable. Others share in bursts and then withdraw into silence, frightened by their momentary spontaneity. Still others exercise caution, choosing instead to observe and listen. We each follow our own rhythm, designed in part by the hardwiring of our birth and finely tuned by our desires and experiences.
And so it happens that what takes some people three months, can take others three years. Or sometimes it's never. Fast or slow, it's a journey. Sometimes you meet someone that initially grates but somehow you manage to scratch beneath the surface and find that hidden gold. Sometimes what you thought was gold was only pyrite. And sometimes a relationship fits perfectly until, with the passing of time, it becomes tighter with age like a pair of jeans after one meal too many. It just doesn't feel right any longer and something's got to be taken out.
It's always interesting when you're in one of these relationships......life isn't really life without them. I don't just mean relationships of the romantic variety, though those are included of course. I mean relationships. Daughter. Mother. Friend. Enemy. Coworker. Acquaintance. Next-door neighbor. Anything that causes one life to interact with another life. You get into them, you get out of them, sometimes with grace and sometimes with callousness. The relationships we ignore, embrace, nuture, accept or choose give life drama and fullness of a sort that we human beings simply cannot live without. I often think that no matter what anyone says about wishing for a quiet life, the true fulfillment of that wish would come at a high price. You would be alone, in every sense of that word. Not for me. I want those that I have around me to give me the entirety of human experience. It's what I am here for.
I write this because a friend of mine, one I've known for years, suddenly became someone else behind all the other things that I am sure about him. I felt a sense of such smallness when I realized it had been something I could have simply asked about if I had not been so selfishly concerned with my own little world. He told me he'd made the conscious choice to remain silent until now and while a part of me was injured, more of me realized the wisdom that he exercised in his life....the mistakes he makes do teach him. I feel a new sense of discovery in my relationship with him and because of this, he and I have new paths to walk down together now. I can't wait!
((Song: "Propinquity(I've Just Begun To Care)" by Michael Nesmith. Lyrics here:
http://www.morethanweimagine.com/nevfighter/propinquity.html ))
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