The Devil and the Fine Print

Not everyone is meant for all things, I have come to realize as I listened to a friend talk about marriage and the recent - and very unexpected - divorce of someone we both care about. I've been thinking a great deal about my place in life lately, destiny and fate being so close mouthed about their intentions and so very fond, as they are, of hidden trap doors and surprises. Karma likes to conceal itself in our complacency and then spring about like a pinball - you get in the game or you get taken out. The very predictability of things can be shaken to its core by a glance or a word you think nothing of at the time, the devil being, as they say, alive and well in the details. The truth is that I understand no more about your inner workings than I do my own. And yet, for the most part, we all manage to muddle along.

The process of coming to know your own self is long and can be on the tricky side. Just when you think you have it mostly figured out, you step on a mine and realize that we are the most complex of creatures - multi layered, mysterious, seductively true and deceptively false. Regardless of what face we present to the world, we have too many sides to reconcile, too many emotions to sort out.
We're an oddly designed species, made up of hard angles and soft sides, social but solitary, filled with questions for which there are no answers, even if we had someone to ask. We are mirrors - some of us free standing and full length, some distorted as funhouses, some with one way glass. We pose, we examine, we check our hems and seams, then conceal what we don't like and hope no one notices. We are desperate to be understood yet spend every spare minute hoping no one figures us out. We are, whether we admit it or not, gameplayers one and all, even though sometimes we play alone.

Of myself, I can say that I usually don't read the fine print, the little contraindications and warnings and exceptions. I judge on first impressions, and while I may be mildly curious to look deeper and take apart the works, I seldom do. I suspect I fear that in the putting of it together again, I may end up with a leftover piece or two. While my altruism is always seeking the same decency I hope to find in myself, my shallow and selfish side expects very little from my human company.

We all have two lives, the one we learn with and the one we live with after that. Glenn Close to Robert Redford, "The Natural"