Importance.

Sometimes, there are people who come into your life unexpectedly. These people are different than others. Important in some way...for some reason. You look at them and there is a closeness to self, a sameness. An instinctive undersatnding. Sometimes these people stay and you are able to discover just what significance they have in your life. Others go away and the memory of them fades with time. You no longer remember how you could look into their eyes and see bits and pieces of yourself mixed in with other things that were foreign, strange, exciting. Instead they just become a name from some long forgotten past life. A chance that you could have had--a choice--that passed.
There's someone like that in my life right now. I don't know why. I can't really explain it. But I just know that this perosn is important to me. It's instinctive. But what will happen? This person will move on, go away, and become someone that I used to know, once, from that one place I lived for a short time.
I wonder sometimes if people ever feel this, too. If I ever show up and someone thinks, "Wow....do I know her? I sure want to. She's important."
Maybe it's just that I haven't lived enough life, yet, to see these things come full circle. Maybe, someday, all these important people who have crossed my path will some day show themselves again and then, finally, I'll understand those feelings. Or maybe these people really do represent the opportunities that my life could have were I to make a different choice.
But what if I were to fight for some of these people? I have before. And never won. But the people who have been important (and, I mean more than familiar....more than friends. Really IMPORTANT. I don't know of a different way to describe it...) who have stayed of their own choice? Man....have they been impactful.
I don't really know where I'm going with this....except that it's interesting to wonder and think about. If yesterday could happen again and if I had been different or the situations had been somehow different...if not my own choice but that of an important person had been different, how would I be different now? ....would I be having these thoughts about how important people are to me in life? Or would I just know that, to someone, I'm that important person, too.
What-ifs are useless unless you put them into a practice for our future.

I am an island.

I told a friend today that I wished for love. Every day, at 11:11, I make a wish. I figure that, with all of those wishes floating around in the cosmos, one of them is bound to come true.
I've been thinking about that wish today. About love. About how and why I want it. About what it means.
But I know what it means. Because I have it. I can wish for it and wish for it...and it'll be like wishing for rain here in Oregon. It comes. I have it. It's not always raining...but that moisture is always there. There's always the residual. Always the effect.
I've wondered for a long time why I'm not loved. What is it about me that seems to distance myself? My own personal motto has turned into "boy did the poets ever get this wrong...man really can be his (or in my case, her) own island."
And maybe I am. Maybe I am an island. Floating there in the sea. Solitary. One to my own. But you know what that means? That means that, at night, I am the last one that to whom the sun grants his kiss. That means that I shine out on an ocean of sameness as one difference...one hope for human life. That means that, within the arms of my shores, I hold a world different from any other. That means that what and who I am is preserved--waiting and pleading and desiring to be discovered.
And love? Isn't that what love is? Hope for life. Hope for the good things in life. Hope for all those things that make us who we are?
I'm not unlovable, though I am alone. I have amazing friends and an amazing family. I have the love of those people who support me every day simply by being there when I call.
And maybe it's not everything...maybe it's not what I want. But it's something...something amazing. And for now? It's going to be enough. Because even though that island may be going through a time of drought and famine...it still represents that hope. And, someday, that hope will be mine.

Wisdom

We often say that age is wisdom. That those who have lived long enough have acquired a knowledge that is more than self--that has come with experience. I say age is not wisdom. The young, too, are capable of wisdom...often without the judgment and prejudice that age can teach. Age brings experience, and once you get enough of it, people begin to believe you.
With age comes reputation...and if that reputation is a favorable one, we consider the possessor full of wisdom...and we consider ourselves wise in listening.
Confidence comes from reputation, also. Confidence moves from arrogance when reputation is formed.
Once someone has proven themselves, then they can say what they believe to be true. Then they can say what they know--and have perhaps always known, though no one would listen. Then they can be wise.