Hoarding words...

Life has turned a corner over the past few months.

Not a lot has changed but a few things have.

People have been kinder and so much more generous. Even as people who are the closest to me have walked out of my life, some others have stepped in. Strangers have become friends. Estranged friends have found their way back effortlessly and have left me with kind words. My circle has grown and my world has billowed into something wider, brighter, happier (and clearer maybe).

Some other near strangers too have written in with kind words - words of encouragement, appreciation, empathy. A cynic would say they are but empty words, but to me these words mean a lot. 

They are the comfort I hold onto as things fall apart - around me, within me.

As months of work fail; As that sense of gloom and doom come knocking; as accusations fly and as anger surges - these are the words that pull me back from the brink. 

These are the words I save in a jar of thankfulness because I know I will need them.

So, like memories, I hoard words too because they hold the power in them to take me back to the magical moments. To the moments of  thoughtful kindness. To moments of unexpected pleasure. To the warmth of love and friendship. To genuine and generous compliments.

And so I hoard words...


PS - For all of those wonderfully generous people who have read my ramblings and have send me their thoughts and thoughtful words of appreciation - Thank you! :) They do mean a lot. 

The Gestalt shift

I hear people describing others - lovers, friends, enemies with great detail.
They see the lines of their face, the color of their eyes, the flecks in their irises,  the skin color,  the sinews of their muscles, the sway of their hips...
The list is endless. After all, poets and writers have loved and hated for eons and everyone has described the people they love or they hate with great attention to detail.
Yes, attention to detail. That is what it is.

Some people can see others (and the world around them) as an assemblage of pieces - the eyes, the hair, the nails, the mind, their heart. Everything is a smaller part of a big whole. They can see where and how the pieces align, mis-align and fall apart. They can see the fault-lines, the wrinkles, the pock-marks, the scars and the freckles. They can see the symmetries and asymmetries of our physical and mental selves. They can see the details which make our individual selves.
And from the assemblage of those many tiny details, there emerges a whole. A person. A thing. A view. A world.

But things seem to work differently for me. I can't see those details - those freckles or the wrinkles. I start with the whole itself.

For me, people and the world comes with a sense of completeness. A wholeness where I cannot identify the pieces or even how they fit in or don't. I cannot even say what I like or don't like.

I either like you or I don't.
No judgment really - just a fondness, a liking, a deeper sense of amicability. Its a visceral feeling that defies explanation (sometimes even logic).

It is so intuitive and instinctive that I can't ever understand what makes some people work and not some others.

Why is it so difficult for me to say I like this about you or that?
Why do I find it hard to notice the shoes or the scarf or the hair or the dress?
I look at your eyes and I look at your mind... and all of you seems to fit into it - wholly, completely, perfectly. Everything else is just there like the garnish on a plate. I might notice it but I don't really care for it.

But then when I listen to you talking about these many aspects of me - some that you like and some that you don't. I see pieces of me as you see them but I struggle to see what you see as a whole...or rather even what you feel for the whole.

There is a gestalt shift I think that happens when the eye moves from the many details to finding the whole. I think I got the process upside down.

I start with the whole of you and maybe then I work backwards to find the pieces that make you, YOU.
I start from the whole of you, to then look for the edges or the lack of them, to see the grains in your character or the bumps in your heart. But by the time I see all that, it doesn't matter because I like you for who you are. Just as you are. Given enough years and the gift of hindsight, maybe I can pick a few qualities I like and a few that I don't but none of that changes much for me... because it is the whole of you that matters by that point.

I see you, I like you and I want you in my life for all that you are...
Would I want to change anything? Probably. Or probably not.

Do you see what I am saying? Does it make sense to you? Do you see, why I struggle to see me as you see?
Do you see why I am ever so clueless?

I cannot but stop wondering how the rest of you see the world and the people in it? A collage of pieces or a single whole?