Being Us

It was someone else. Someone else walked down the street with someone else's memories, because it certainly didn't seem real anymore. Who was she, this strange woman who had lived here, done that, felt this way and had those dreams? At some point there would be shift and then she would be herself again. A simple girl, with a few wrinkles around her eyes, expecting at any moment to figure out what she was looking for. Maybe love, maybe riches, maybe just a reason to smile again every day... whatever could make that happen.

Who are you? What defines "you"? A life of comparisons, realizing what I am not, yet unable to find the specific thing that makes me what I am. No part of this body can tell you what I am. Not the length of my hair, nor the shape of my nose, nor even the lines on my palms. Yet here I am, and you beside me, asking the same questions at various points in the day.

On the highway, I drive along, wishing the other cars would go faster because I'm aware of myself and why I want to get home faster. Then a car passes me and I glimpse the other driver and realize that he is driving along, wishing the other cars would go faster because he is aware of himself and why he wants to get home faster. Then the road transforms into the hundreds of selves thinking about where they want to be and the frame of my little car expands, the boundaries now including a community of people, all with similar goals, who sometimes forget they are never alone.