SAME QUESTIONS, CHANGING ANSWERS

Mental conversations for me run long and lengthy. Of course I have no idea how long the average person sits and talks to himself or even if they do but I assume my internal banter becomes a little long winded. They always seem to take a question and answer format as if in a great debate in front of some unseen audience. Each member straining to here every word. Each answer the deciding factor between life and death. The questions remain the same. The answers are ever changing.

This thing called life. Confusion becomes the order of the day. Every day becomes a different insight into just how little we know. I sat today and tried to look at life from the perspective of a complete stranger. Is my blue your blue or is it just a shade bluer? Are my tears more painful or do you cry harder? Does my heart and yours beat in tandem? Are we dancing to the same rhythm?

I saw people and imagined their stories. Simple things changed what I saw. Words and actions, even the minutest aspects of them, affected the image quite greatly. One moment I was seeing an old woman who was struggling to fend for her family, the next I was seeing an old trickster conning an individual. One moment I was looking at a pastor, the next I was looking at a man weighed down by his own beliefs. And so on. The examples were numerous. I wondered whether my seeing them had changed their path. Their destiny. Did it have any impact on them? Any on mine?


I remember reading an article about how flawed we are at giving a true picture of who we are. With almost every move we make, we reinforce the image that we want people to retain of us. Then I wondered if that last smile I had gotten was genuine or if that joke I had been told had some hidden meaning. What am I hiding? What are you hiding?

Human beings are apparently unable to give an objective view of who they are. You are funny because someone said you are. You are pretty because boys stop to stare. Subjectively we are all combinations of insecurity and daring, of hidden failures and embellished success, of bitter disappointments and high hopes, of self praise and self loathing. As long as that is the case the answers remain changing while the questions remain ever the same.