February 28, 2011
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Species from long ago
Do you ever feel like you’re missing things? Just walking by people on the street, when you hear a passing line in their conversation? Maybe they are top-notch people having a fantastic conversation. I always imagine they came from someplace with an unforgettable atmosphere, and they will always remember that place as they piece it into the story of their lives and all the places they had lived, and that they are going someplace where something really unexpected is going to happen and it will turn into a great story.
I feel like I am missing all the lives I’m not living. What is happening elsewhere in the world?
When you see someone walking down the street, you always assume they know people. Their friends, the people they meet up with and share their life with, are somewhere else, and that person will eventually meet up with them. But what if there was a person who didn’t know anyone else? They were a person that fell into a very specific pocket where they lived life without knowing anyone. If there were such a person, no one would know about it. Because everyone who saw them would think their friends are someplace else, just like we always do.
That’s what makes connections hard. We always assume that everyone else already has a life, so there needs to be some special reason for why the lines between our lives would be crossed, and we would suddenly have more than a diplomatic connection too. It is a curious thing how friends are made; really if you ever try very hard, you won’t end up friends with someone. Somehow your friends just happen.
Do you ever think, maybe I would be great friends with the person I’m standing next to, I just don’t know that? It’s like if C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien sat next to each other on a train one day, awkwardly glancing at each other a few times, before they each got off at their stops, and then they never saw each other again. Has that ever happened to us?
There are lots of things to wonder about, like the daily life of Chinese farmers, people who raise goats in the mountains, people who live on islands and see the beach everyday, and everything else that happens in other countries, since the story we get in newspapers is never the story we would feel if we were there.
It’s a horrible feeling to have missed something.
Comments (7)
I often think about the very different lives I and others could be living, given just a tiny adjustment to the reality we are currently in. Great post; I like the way you think!
This is an intriguing post. I have recently reconnected with some of the people I went to school with on FaceBook and I am amazed at where they are now because I never would have believed it from what I knew about them then. I often set and wonder what happened in their lives that led them to their current circumstances and yeah I hate the idea that I missed out on those years of friendship with them.
Dude. This is me. I want to walk up to that interesting person and say “Hi!” but, like you said, they have lives and so why would I be in there, too? I don’t really feel like I’ve made friends with anyone, it’s really more like they made friends with me. Afterwards I think, “I should have said something.” Or I think of some witty comment in my head. But then I think that they wouldn’t have found it half as witty as I do….
This is a wonderfully thoughtful post, and I believe you are right. I adore the phrase, “the story we would feel.”
@leaflesstree That’s exactly what I was going to say!
Wonderful! You are the opposite of the person that we sometimes see who deliberately averts his eyes to avoid seeming to notice you at all. What a person so wrapped up in themselves finds interesting is hard to imagine. Maybe they are one of those mysterious beings that doesn’t even belong in this world and are waiting to be transported to their own “real” world.
I have often wondered about that, too. About missing something.
But then, as I walk alone in the streets, savouring the breeze that caresses my cheek, or smelling the books at a book store, I realize that I may miss out on what it is like to live in Tibet, or I might miss out what it is like to be around whales and dolphins everyday, or I might miss out what it is like to have a farm and harvest your own crops—I may miss all that, but then again, I know that I cannot live all of those lives. I have my own, and I would make the best of it. I wouldn’t want it any other way. If I were in Tibet, or if I were a marine biologist or a farmer—I might have also missed out on what and who I am today.
So it’s all good. I’m glad where I am right now. There are definitely some stuff I’d still like to have and places to go, but right now, I am making the most of what I have and keep on planning on where I am going to be in the years to come.
@Carmel Jamaica -
“if I were a marine biologist or a farmer—I might have also missed out on what and who I am today.”
*thumbs up*
Thanks for reading, Carmel.