A recent Martin family reunion, where I saw aunts and uncles and cousins I hadn't seen for 10 years, left me thinking about how we each have our individual lives and how, occasionally, the circles of our lives briefly - and often, barely - overlap the life circles of others.
Our own world whirls about us, madly and gladly, and we are so absorbed within its spirals. And then, for a brief moment, we cross paths with others whose own world whirls madly and gladly about themselves.
I've always thought how strange there are so many lives out there going on without our knowledge. I used to sit on a bank overlooking a highway with my best college buddy and wonder about those lives I'll never know in each passing car.
We each carry our own little world about us. We leave the house, loved ones left behind, and their little worlds go on without us, as ours without them. Children go off to school for the day; and later off to college for a whole semester at a time. And their world is no longer ours, and ours no longer theirs. Except in those moments when our circles overlap.
So strange. So strange.
We are all aliens in our own little bubbles of life in a giant world of alien-filled bubbles.
So strange. So strange.
And the ultimate act of overlap is to take another in your arms, and wrap one another, skin on skin, bubbles completely merged, for those few glorious moments where there is no mine and there is no yours; boundaries dissolve and the two worlds becomes one and infinite, two as one.
And then, breathless and flushed, you slowly tease your circles apart. And life resumes, no longer so alien and alone. For as long as it lasts.
Only, try as you might, no two can maintain a singular bubble of one. And one day, once again, you realize you are alone in your bubble, looking out at the world looking in.
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