A Few Steps Back

Take a few steps back.

Take a few steps back and you will see the whole person.

You meet a person and find her qualities enjoyable. Or you are told he is related to you. Or she is a co-worker. So you are pulled together with a special form of magnetism. Day to day you are face to face. Working or playing or loving. And for a time it is wonderful. All pleasantries and the excitement of discovering new things.

But then the closeness rubs. The proximity makes annoyances vivid. Highlights the differences. The ways in which you are not the same, can never be the same. And judgment is planted and grows and grows until all that is visible is the difference. The ways in which the other person does not live properly because she does not live like you.

So you have to take a few steps back.

Take a few steps back and see the story behind that person.

Each life is developed by different characters, punctuated with different scenes, hiccuped by different plot twists. When you first meet each other you give the exposition, the background information that makes you intriguing to each other to begin with. But with closeness comes an ability to forget the background. And to forget all of the qualities you held in such esteem in that other person because they were qualities that you did not have. That you want to develop for yourself.

Sentiment is perhaps one of the largest taboos of humanity. How often do you take an hour to sit down with your closest friends and tell them why they are your closest friends? Such a sharing of a sentiment is acceptable between young couples, but elicits uncomfortable chuckles when suggested amid other types of relationships.

But the spilling of sentiment is important. And not just so your friends know why you value them, but so you can hear why each person values each other. There may be things you love about a friend that the friction of proximity has rubbed away. With the simple reminding from someone else's sentiment you are able to take a step back. To see the whole person.

We form relationships. We are workers and friends and lovers and sons and daughters and mothers and fathers. But we are also individuals. And perhaps one of the truest ironies of life is that it takes stepping back, taking in the whole picture, to see the individual.