"Metaphorical Touch" and "Living"
Do you ever feel like you are always reaching out to touch those you love... friends, family, what have you... and they will allow you to touch them, but they never really touch you back? I feel like that all the time... So I stop reaching out so much, knowing the passive rejection that awaits and wanting to avoid it... but in doing that, I inadvertently place more significance--and more hope--on those fewer instances... thereby magnifying the rejection I feel. So basically, I'm creating my own problems. Lovely.
But why is it that they don't touch back? Why is it that they are content to just allow you to touch them? Is it because you have established a pattern of doing all the reaching/touching so they don't even notice or think to? Or is it because you don't matter to them like they do to you? I think maybe it's both... I don't know...
Just kicking the dirt around in my head. On the one hand, I wish I could stop feeling... at least so intensely as I do. It would make life so much simpler. But on the other hand, having known this depth of feeling, having come this far in life, I don't think I could ever be content to go back. I look around me at all the people afraid to feel or oblivious to what life offers in that respect, and I feel sorry for them.
I heard a good quote today: "We're not here for a long time... We're here for a good time." It wasn't talking about partying or being reckless and stupid. It was talking about making the most of it, and not putting things off. Making the time time that we have here good. Not wasting opportunities and making sure that everything is perfect and prepared before moving and doing... It brought to mind something that I say to myself--that the key to success is to START... If you want to succeed at something, you must first start that something... the first step on the path to success is just that: a step. Action. Doing. We don't learn and then live--we live, and in so doing we learn.
This is the way I think of it:
We are not born with the tools we need to succeed in any area of life. We have to acquire those tools. If they were sitting right in front of us, then we'd all be raging successes with love and family and God and work and the whole lot of it... but we aren't, are we? The tools that we need are found only when we begin to move forward, which starts from birth. They are there for the taking at various points on the journey. We move forward, we find, we master, we keep moving forward, finding more, mastering more... We prepare for life as we live life, not before or in between. For it is life that prepares us for itself.
As an aside to that, it would be beneficial to note that just as those tools are spread out along the way, so are the life experiences that those tools were designed to help you with. We will not always be fully prepared for what we come upon, but that cannot prevent us from moving forward. Yes, we will get scratched and tripped and whirled around and sometimes even beaten to within an inch of our lives. But the only way through it is through it.
Wow, ok, I'm gonna stop... I don't even know where all that came from (well, i kinda do, but...). Been a while since that's happened. I hope that helps you, whoever you are...
- Jess
