It really is all about You

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I’ve been thinking about you for a long time. Perhaps not you in particular, as I don’t really know you that well, our paths crossing at different moments and turns, or not intersecting at all. Nonetheless I do think about you, that is, I think about anyone who is a “you” to someone else, just as I am. Each of us is a being with a mind and personality that makes us unique, in ways both subtle or significant. Yet all of us who have ever walked this earth and reached any semblance of self-consciousness are really quite alike, which is why I am confident talking about you who are reading this essay.

I started thinking about you when I was a child, wondering what it might take for you to like me, or be my friend. I’m sure I thought about you when I calculated what I’d have to do or say to convince you to agree with me in an argument, or join me in some gambit I had planned out for my day. Like most teenagers I was really preoccupied with you and others like you, some whose attention I tried to win and some whom I hoped would leave me alone. During those impressionable years I searched for any number of people like you whom I wanted to emulate or even idolize, copying their manners and appearances, or adopting their habits, ideas and values. And as I moved into my twenties I yearned to forge a relationship with the kind of you who might also be looking for a you—like me—one willing to return my interest and consent to becoming my partner for life. 

I know I am not alone in thinking about you. In fact my passion for popular songs has confirmed my supposition. The rock ‘n roll era inspired me with lyrics that reminded me in waking each day that You Were On My Mind.  Why? Because You Light Up My Life, every waking moment confirming that I’ve Got My Mind Set On YouWhether I had to live With or Without You, I never stopped Wishing You Were Here.  Top 40 troubadours proclaimed to the world that I Think I Love You, leaving no doubt that I was Stuck on You. My preoccupation with you came naturally as my parents often passed the time singing about The Very Thought of You. Apparently they, too, were mesmerized by the fact that You Do Something to Me, so much so that they believed they Only [Had] Eyes for You. And when that attraction was requited, it was self evident to them that It Had to Be You. I’m sure they both felt that their lives had been missing something ‘Til There Was You.

As amusing as it is to recall how often you are the subject in my mental playlist of popular melodies, an experience from decades ago shaped what I think about you more than any song title. For seven years I was unexpectedly blessed in working among older men and women at a retirement community in Pennsylvania. These folks, my adopted grandparents if you will, taught me so much about the you that I was, am, and will someday be. It was here that I first heard an oft-repeated maxim of the nursing home staff:

We are as older people what we’ve always been, only more so.

While I didn’t doubt this could be true for you, heaven forbid it would apply to me. But if it did, should I then expect my own quirks and foibles to become more exaggerated as I got older, when my ebbing strength would rob me of my long-developed skill in hiding them from you? Would you someday see in me a crotchety, opinionated, and impatient old coot? Or would you chuckle along with my irreverent humor and playful silliness? Years of observation have convinced me that the you of our tomorrows will be much like the you of our todays, at least in the way we look at things and react to each other. While personalities may appear to change over time, our attitudes, manners and affectations do seem to become more fixed and habitual as we age. I’ve already noticed how the laziness or impetuousness of youth often becomes the lethargy and foolishness of midlife. Likewise the hard work and responsibility we adopt when we’re young usually stays with us as the driving motivation and stamp of character that carries us throughout our adult years.   

Being a parent, and also working with children, teenagers and adult peers over four decades in schools has confirmed the wisdom of this nursing home observation, causing me to wonder, are you ever really and fully you? When are you that person, that you whom others know, recognize, love, count on, figure out, disparage, dismiss, or write off? When your name is spoken, which you do people bring to mind? Which you will be most remembered by others?  Will it be the you

…of those innocent, carefree and promising years of your childhood?

…from those coming of age seasons of your adolescence?

…when you left home to discover your identity and life’s purpose?

…when you joined company with another you in a life defining commitment, or as part of a succession of several partnerships?

…when you brought one or more like yourself into this world, one like you in appearance, name and so much more?

…when you shared in the long and hard work of being a parent to those whose lives would change you even as they were shaped by you?

…when you reached that moment of mid-life when you couldn’t avoid wondering if this was all that life had in store for you?

…when your identity, so defined by your life’s work and accrued possessions is passed on to others who now speak of you in the past tense?

…when you depend on others to help you endure days and nights when their care, their patience and their understanding keep you going?

Ages ago a psalmist observed that you might endure for 70 seasons of life, perhaps 80 if you were strong. But when, over the course of the many years you’ve been graced to ride this planet around our home star, were you really, fully, completely you? When was I really me? Perhaps the question is a misguided one for both of us, flawed as it may be in its assumptions about what it means to be human. Like the earth-ship upon which you and I live out our days, we are always in motion, we are never fixed or frozen in time. Nor can our lives be captured in the frame of a still-life image, not even a selfie posed in front of the most evocative background.  You are more than a single moment, or day, or era in which you’ve endured. Your life, like each cell in your body, is constantly changing. In every frame of the motion picture of your life, you are the sum of all of your perfections and imperfections, choices and indecisions, actions and hesitations, thoughts and feelings. Your past is a perpetual prelude to your now, your now an irreducible consummation of who you’ve ever been. Your feelings, even those locked tightly in the conscious and unconscious sanctuaries of your being, remain primed and ready to surface at a moment’s provocation, stirred by a sight, a sound, even a smell that triggers a memory or emotion held in permanent storage on your cerebral hard drive. Whether in torrents of passionate expression that can’t be held back, or in troubling moods that you keep safely hidden—who you are, truly are, becomes fully present once again. 

When you stop to think about it, being human really is all about YOU: the you of this moment, the you of all of your previous moments; the you that may be transparent to others and the you that remains a mystery, even to those who think they can read you like a book. The more we know ourselves as we are, as we’ve been in the making these many years, and the more we can accept who we are and aren’t, the more we grow in the ability—the grace if you will—to realize what Jesus may have meant when he urged us to love each other even as we love ourselves. Could it be that this was what the song from my youth was really trying to convey beyond the simplicity of its tune? Could it really be that to know, know, know you, is to love, love, love you?

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