Haven't you ever thought about how strange it is that we credit certain personal experiences to people and how we label those experiences by the person's name?
We could know a stranger through and through... But without their name... That knowledge still floats in the mind as "someone". Until that someone becomes a person whose name you know. We then feel that feeling of ease...like we know the person....cause we can now relate the knowledge and experience of that person with a name.
Just a name... How simple is that?
Just ask them their name.
Cause then we can credit the feelings we feel for that person with a name.
Most crushes begin this way and end this way.
Just a name.
Nothing more, nothing less.
The position of a stranger is really potent. They could be anyone in the future... They may have been anyone in the past. But in the present, they remain but a strange figure of existence.... Unknown.... Unrecognizable... A mystery.
Though I do sometimes find a familiar face in a stranger until I realise they are not who I thought them to be. Maybe their nose is a little more smaller... Maybe the clothes they wear is a little unusual... Maybe their voice is different.... But they remind me of someone I knew.
A certain someone like you.
It's really funny how for so many years, I had a person who I called a stranger for a multitude of reasons. I knew nothing but a name. A personality that was still a blank slate then, untouched by time and pains of living.... Now holds the scarring of life.
Most friends or classmates from childhood are like this... So unknown even when you had spent so much time with them in the past. They are unknown to you now.
Did I make you recall someone from your childhood?
But to be honest, the position of a stranger... The position of you being that stranger is dangerously exhilarating. The persons around you haven't formed an impression of you yet, so be who you want to be.... You have that liberty here.
That's why I sometimes feel like beginning again in another place... No known people around me... No known names... In a different city... It's like restarting a new life while you're still alive. A new chapter, no, a new book altogether.
But we'll always carry a little bit of our history into our present story no matter how hard we try... We'll never be a complete stranger to ourselves.
