Hello Stranger

by Katherine Center

You’re not just your face, is what I mean. But man, it sure is a big part of you. Like your shadow. So faithfully and constantly with you, you don’t even notice it. It’s just always there. But then one day it’s gone. Except it’s not just the shadow that’s gone. It’s the person making the shadow. You. You’re gone.

“Seeming okay and being okay are not the same thing.”

It was a strange thought. Who on earth could you trust if not yourself?

“Basically we tend to decide on what the world is and who people are and how things are—and then we look for evidence that supports what we’ve already decided. And we ignore everything that doesn’t fit.”

Maybe life was full of surprises. Maybe disappointments could turn out to be blessings. Maybe tonight would end up being fun, after all.

That’s the dark underbelly of hope that nobody ever talks about. How it can skew your perspective. How it can keep you in long past when any reasonable person would’ve been out.

But I guess that’s the great thing about life—it gives you chance after chance to rethink it all. Who you want to be. How you want to live. What really matters.

Every real human interaction is made up of a million tiny moving pieces. Not a simple one-note situation: a symphony of cues to read and decipher and evaluate and pay attention to.

Isn’t it lucky when we’re drawn to people who can teach us things we need to learn?

Seeing the world differently helps you see things not just that other people can’t—but that you yourself never could if you weren’t so lucky. It lets you make your own rules. Color outside your own lines. Allow yourself another way of seeing.

It happens. But I find the antidote to that is just keeping a sense of humor. And staying humble. And laughing a lot. And doubling down on smiling. We’re all just muddling through, after all. We’re all just doing the best we can. We’re all struggling with our struggles. Nobody has the answers. And everybody, deep down, is a little bit lost.