Did you miss me? ;)

"When it was over, all I could think about was how this entire notion of oneself, what we are, is just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions. It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery, and I had been a part of that. It was a gift. Life was raging all around me, and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses. That's what I love the most -- connecting with the people. Looking back, that's all that really mattered."

--excerpt from Waking Life

There are people in our lives we are destined to meet, and there are probably the same number of people we were NOT supposed to meet. Some friends come and go, some family members and relatives we get to share ourselves with more significantly, and perhaps a few strangers find their way into our lives and change our perceptions forever. Nobody knows if these social interactions are random occurrences or borne of divine or cosmological intricacies, yet one thing is certain, it is we who choose how deep each relationship goes. It is we who decide how much of an influence each character partakes in our lives.

There are people we meet and instantly find a close connection with. There are people we meet who irritate the hell out of us without any rational excuse. And then there are those who come across as impertinent to our continuing development towards self-actualization.

But like all relationships, first impressions don't usually last and we are often left with the task of nurturing the friendship that would make it last a lifetime. These people who stand the test of time are, in my opinion, those worth keeping. Not to say that I don't have acquaintances or "networks" who are important in the other aspects of my life or how the brokendown intimacy that results in uncomfortable situations need not be prolonged. Again, it's our choice who to keep and who to let go of. (Ahh ... letting go ... what a b*tch it is to do!)

Sometimes the boundary between "close" and "closer" can be indistinguishable. I mean, I've had friends who were very close to me then after some time became just acquaintances. Some we kill off, others leave without sufficient closure. I guess it's the natural cycle of relationships: what you lose, another person gains. We all contribute to the lives that we touch one way or another and it need not necessarily be positive at all. This is why I strongly feel that all people are partly responsible in fucking up somebody else's life. It's the norm. It's, like, an unspoken prerogative.

There are moments of lucidity, however, when we see the picture in full detail, where we see the people in our lives in gray scale and it suddenly makes a lot of sense where they stand. Remember these moments because these are your unimpeded thoughts of pure objectivity. Wisdom or truth springing from your subconscious. Excrement coming from unadulterated emotional constipation.

For all its worth, I am grateful for all my friends, but I'm even more grateful, nay, indebted, to those people who've stuck by my side all these years and have been there for me in mental sickness and psychiatric health. For those times when I hadn't been as lucid as I wanted, when my tongue had lashed out the truth in its most offensive flavor, when my despair had left me asphyxiated in unwavering stubborness. You know who you are Ü

And to my new "cyber" friends and other resilient readers -- I'm truly thankful for your honesty and unbridled intellectualism. Such are rare these days. Ü

PS - I hope it's me talking and not my manic self. Hehehe