He is charming and kind. He laughs easily and gives openly. He has collected friends like seashells. He makes room in his world for their mess.
And they are messy. They have divorces and children with illness. They are selfish—at times. They want more without giving—sometimes. His friends sometimes say the wrong things or make the wrong moves. They hurt him. They don’t mean to do it; but they are messy, these people.
So he drops them out of his seashell bucket. He has no room, anymore, for their mess.
***
Imagine a party, a room pulsing with music and people. Each person manages, sometimes poorly, a burden. Some carry their weight like a distended abscess, oozing and sore, forcing others to look away. Others hoist them onto their backs, like overstuffed duffels, slinging them around with abandon, wrecking into everyone and everything. Still others hold their burdens like a gift between two nimble hands, proud and gentle, an offering. Again more try to shove them down and back, under a shoe, into a purse or a pocket.
Don’t look, their movements tell you. I’ve got my junk and I don’t want to get it all over you.
The crowd has become unwieldy, people stumble about, knocking into furniture and each other. Sometimes, they assist one another, smiling with understanding. Sometimes, they grumble and create distance. Some leave.
***
“Being human is risky.” Knowledge from a character in a TV show. He’s right. Being human is risky. We trudge about with our burdens, and our joys, and we find pockets of community that has similar junk, or that can handle the sight of our junk.
Alternatively, we are the seashell collector, enjoying them for a moment, and tossing them back when the icky creature crawls out from hiding. He has no time for risk. It hurts. It’s ugly. It changes us.
I’ll take the risk. I’d rather be smeared with other’s mess if it means I can also be smeared with their joy. I can withstand heartbreak, because the payoff is so very high. I have learned, I am still learning, the sloughing clean exhilaration of forgiveness, both given and received.
Being human is risky.