There is a beautifully illustrated Chinese book about two people who live right next door to each other with only one thin wall between them. They carry out their daily schedules almost identically, but one takes a right turn when leaving the house every morning, and the other a left. One day, by chance, they meet on the corner of a street and feel an instant connection, but a twist of fate makes it seemingly impossible for them to ever meet again. Then, symbolic spring comes and the wall between them is knocked down, bridging the gap and making one home. It's a beautiful ending to a beautiful short story, and one wonders if life is ever like that, or if that's only the stuff of "once upon a time".

Have you ever wondered what things would be like "if"...well, if things weren't the way that they presently are? It's a part of human nature to take those journeys into uncharted territory, to let your mind drift and think of the possibilities beyond the choices that you've made, but when is it wise to just stop, turn back, and live the life that you've already predestined for yourself? Or can we even ever truly backpedal? Is there a reverse shift in life, or do we only have the choice of going forward?

Looking back can be a dangerous and taxing habit on heart and mind. But it happens nonetheless, against our soundest judgment, because we only realize where we are after things have reached a standpoint where we are able to gain perspective on them, after we are already entangled in that web and can only see the past as a visible part of the present. To believe in fate is to cede all personal control, to make choices with logic in mind and not emotion.

Or is it? What if...what if you hadn't called home that one day or made that spontaneous trip to the mountains? Or what if you hadn't taken that one psychology class on a lark, or written that one e-mail as a stream of consciousness? The thing about life is that it only takes one. One phone call, one glance across a crowded room, one squeeze of the hand, one tear, one moment of utter bliss or agony, and there you are, your very being propelled into that whirlwind, that swarm of sensation that strips you of all sense of reason, of all that you've known. And after that's happened, after falling without even consciously choosing to, I can't help but think that there can be no turning back.

So maybe those people who you weren't destined to meet, those experiences you weren't destined to feel, aren't just flukes, kinks in the network of fate that arise every now and then. Maybe it's more than that, maybe it's just that, maybe it's less. Either way, there are some things that we can't take back, can't forget, can't erase.

There are crinkled and folded letters on lined paper in the worn back pockets of jeans, scented sweatshirts that trigger raw, sensual, instinctual response, empty containers that speak an easier language to the heart than do shoeboxes packed with souvenirs and gadgets. In any sense, the concept of taking back time, of forgetting, of destiny, is all what we as logical beings have invented for a world, a life, that theoretically, at least, should make reasonable sense. Alain de Botton wrote, "the longing for a destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life." From life, from our choices, we demand certainty and emotional insurance for the heart, we safeguard our feelings with duct tape and wires, but, in the end, just how much are we ruled by our sense of logic? Doesn't a part of us, no matter how tiny, deeply yearn for that sense of FATE, of DESTINY, of "meant to be" that comes from just a moment or two of silence, of an intent stare, a touch, a traced mark on the palm of your hand? It's as if the chemical reaction between two people overides any sense of reason that exists under normal circumstances and tosses us into the very eye of the storm.

What truly "justifies" falling in and out of love? We try so hard to find even just a modicum of sense in that irrational, all-encompassing feeling in order to properly attribute some sort of sense to the process of loving someone, but isn't the very beauty of love in its indecipherability? Maybe there comes a time when we just have to throw up our hands and admit defeat, if it can even be considered defeat. Eventually, maybe we just have to let go, live in the moment, close our eyes and fall deeper down that we can see. After all, isn't that why it's called "falling" in love? One cannot "reason" into love, because it defies all reason. one can only fall...intensely, passionately, vulnerably. And after that, even if pain comes, at least there is the spring after the frost, the life that stems up from under mountains of snow and fluorishes into a new blossom (excuse the cheesy analogy). Anyway, I think that one old song by the Gershwins says it infinitely better than I ever can:

"the way you wear your hat
the way you sip your tea
the way your smile that beams
the way you sing off key
the way we danced till three
the way you changed my life ...
they can't take that away from me"


...here's to carpe diem and living the fairy tale instead of dreaming it.




by christine at 3:22 AM ©

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