“But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me” --Jack Kerouac On the Road
When I was in elementary school, I loved tag. We played tag one day in acting as a warm-up, and it was literally the best time of my life; I was like, “I love college.”
And now my parents are probably like, “So this is what we are paying for. Wonderful.”
Growing up on tag, I became an expert on chasing after people as if they were butterflies. I fell in love with being “it,” but I think it’s easy to forget that when you’re it, no one else wants to be “it”; everyone is running in circles around you hoping to deflect your touch. You’re the sacrificial lamb with no god to serve.
I am so sick of building houses out of human beings. Unless there is a white picket fence around me to enforce the curtilage, find somewhere new to nest. You cannot build altars for people who fail to recognize your worth.
Sometimes I think that I do this for some inquisitive reason, or I think it’s adorable to Nancy Drew around people who have no interest in being “discovered.” I am nosey, and maybe I think that I will get some kind of gratification from cracking the kindred spirit of the human genome.
I don’t know why we insist on building these homes, and then persistently look for holes to patch up, or crevasses to polish when that is not our job. People aren’t HGTV projects; they aren’t hobbies. You cannot stick around with the intention of fixing someone in order to flip them for another buyer --people don’t work like that.
And that totally sucks, sometimes. Because it’s those “sometimes” that you wish that they did. It’s those “sometimes” that people become easier to explain. Maybe that is why we follow astrology because horoscopes put people in boxes so that we do not have to figure them out ourselves.
It isn’t necessarily our job to unzip individuals, take everything out of them, and scrutinize everything as if they are archaeological finds -- especially, if they do not have an interest of being dug up.
The only job we are truly skilled for is the one that we look at in the mirror every morning. You have the involuntary job of discovering yourself, understanding yourself, and loving yourself. You are the one human being that you should be chasing after; if we are playing tag, then focus on tagging yourself.
If they want to call, then they will call. If they want to be found, then they won’t hide. If they want you, they will act like it, and if the case arises that they do not, then do not throw up your middle finger in an attempt of a poorly constructed temper tantrum of retaliation. It doesn’t work. You cannot force someone to love you; you cannot force someone to see yourself in the light that you should see yourself in. And it is often these times when you are more than willing to give 150 percent to prove yourself worthy of being loved.
If you chase after what you want, then you will collide into those who are doing the same; and sometimes those are the ones that stick with you through the journey. At other times, they are often the first to let go, but after they are gone, you can’t run after them in hopes of releasing the title of “it.”
Life happens, and sometimes you just have to let it, and be okay with walking through holding your own hand.
