Temporary People

Hello you,

I hope the experience of reading this is as relatable to you as it is to me…

In the bid to find connection we encounter several people we look to optimistically, hoping that all the things we come to like or love about them becomes a permanent fixture of our lives only to figure out that they never meant to stay as long as we’d hoped.

The fleeting experience of passing people, rushed intimacy, people who take a bit of your soul each time they leave. Yet, stay imprinted in your memories.

Have you ever experienced this? Not speaking to a person for a while and then, talking to them sometime down the line only to realize that your memory starts to fill with their little quirks, the way they pronounce their words, their word preference, accent, voice, intonations. For some, they never leave, their presence just dims only to shine at opportune moments. You remember their voice somewhere in your consciousness. For example, there was this guy I was acquainted with briefly that had a funny way of pronouncing balcony, it wasn’t funny really, just different and now whenever I have to talk about a balcony, as now, I remember his voice. He is among a list of several.

Have you also come to notice how you imbibe some words from your friends’ vocabulary, their thought patterns in some instances, which is profoundly warming. This attribute is not just consistent with people we remain close to but also with people we are fortunate to encounter and relate with no matter how brief the interaction. Some people are just so memorable or maybe you are also just too fond of memories.

So it is true what they say, you really do become your association but the question is, how profoundly are we influenced by the encounters we have?

when I wrote the piece on “broken, borrowed people” I thought I had finally unraveled the core of acceptance when it came to relationships and human interaction, but to prove how intricate these issues are, even now, the question of acceptance largely boils down to how often it is going to be required. Of course, the ready answer is as often as possible but that’s the hardest part of the journey.

The thing with getting involved with a stranger is that they stop being strangers after the first time and when they leave, they leave behind some form of orientation and with bits and pieces of you that you have shared.

I came across this term “Artificial intimacy” as postulated by Esther Perel which refers to a sort of AI but for emotions, another term will be false intimacy. This is what I am trying to encapsulate when I use the term temporary people but at the core of this ideology is the question –

How do we stop seeking deep connection from people who will eventually leave and if leaving is guaranteed, how do we decide what to share, who to share it with, and when to share it?

In this world of ghosting and heightened sense of loneliness, where we feel lonely even amidst people we deeply care about. It is said that it is like being with someone but grieving their absence. I write about this because I know a lot of us go through this without the words for it. That phantom image of deep connection only to realize that it’s just shadow.

I have heard it said “attention is an expression of love”. This statement is loaded and easily relatable in today’s world where we have a lot of information struggling for our consciousness. Now being present for the people we care about is not just about our desire to be with them but the necessity of presence in each moment especially, the most vulnerable ones whether they reach out or not.

I think there is a gradient for the type of connection we seek from the people we meet which in its own way makes it easier for us to decide what to share and with whom to share.

However, it gets more complicated when what we need is some form of intimacy from a person we trust or have come to perceive as our person only to realize the connection was just phantom and not one we could have discovered without the circumstances that led to the revelation.

Now, I know thinking about it this way makes it even more scary, like how do you predict assuredly how people will react in unexpected circumstances? How do you get prepared for the inevitability of possible disappointment that in turn may affect your ability to trust? There are no easy answers to these questions other than learning with acceptance again and again that nothing last forever even good things come to an end on this side of life.

This is the sad reality of living, even the best of relationships get separated by death be it demise of a person or the end of an era in a person’s life. Maybe the approach is to seek gratitude and to take the lessons that each person teaches us however temporary they stay. To tell ourselves the stories of that experience in ways that can help us bring to fore all the good parts, the not so good parts, and the unmet expectations with equanimity.

I will leave you with these parting words:

You have to learn how to take want you want from people gently and to close the door without damaging the hinges.

Till next time, stay jiggy😉.

Xoxo,

Dcconnoisseur