Two lanes, One road :: Observations along this Journey of Life
I watched a man and a woman on the CTA Blue Line train on my way home tonight.
Both Caucasian; both rather thin but healthy looking; both casually dressed but nicely so; both prolly aged in their 40's or 50's. Woman sitting in a train seat, man towering over her as he stood beside her in the center walkway of the otherwise filled train car.
Probably a couple; probably been married to each other for years now; both looking at only each other most of the ride - woman looking up to the man, man gripping the handle on her blue seat back as he looked down at her.
Both smiling enough at each other that I could see, from at least 10 feet away, the light lines wrinkled at the edges of their eyes and around the corners of their smiling and moving mouths like parentheses around the laughter and words they shared between them; the actual sounds of which were lost to me in all the rush and clatter and white noise of the passenger-filled train while in motion.
And at some point while studying them, I did notice they seemed to have a sort of similar look about them. I recalled the observation of couples beginning to look more and more alike as they aged.
Because they aged together.
And maybe that's it, I realized.
It's the "together" bit, that does it; that transforms faces and figures and patterns that were once individual and independent and separate and randomly-wandering souls within the world -into- a pair. A couple. A set. Two singles connected by an increasing number of networked ideas and memories and shared experiences and feelings and sights and sounds and smells and tastes and textures and senses....
..... And it all combines. And builds. And adds on.
The familiarity in features of two previously different forms is so affected by the sharing of the same events and emotions and experiences along the same Time line, often at the same or near-enough points, that the layering in the physical form is built upon in the same or similar way.
We laugh together at shared jokes or stories or movies.
We both ate the same foods at a meal together.
We witnessed a calamity and were each equally struck by the shock and horror and negativity of it all.
We comforted a friend about a lost pet.
We went camping together.
We attended the wedding of our friends.
We watched our children grow-up.
We never went sailing - except for that once, in Italy, when we got on a boat thinking it was a water taxi (but wasn't!) and....
.... a singular event was created that only We were there to share in.
or/and
.... We weren't together yet, but each experienced similar events, at similar times in our lives.
Our similarities - the similarities of the couple on the train; the similarities we see in our parents, our grandparents, our married friends - are the layers of Life, are the patterns and pressures and pushes and pulls and seasons and years, all seen at once, but as if in double-vision when a set of companions is before us...
Long-together companions show us how similar our stories can be, the products of sharing, when we all start from so far apart as individuals in this world.
~MCL~
Friday 5 June 2009
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