People like handcrafted plates

“Sit. Take this plate. Look at it closely. Examine it. What do you see?”

“It’s decorated,” Jill replied, her young age obstructing her perspective.

“What more?” her aunt pressed.

“It’s colourful. Artfully decorated. It seems handcrafted. And there are so many details. You need to look closely to see them. To appreciate them”.

“Good. Now throw it down”.

Jill glared at her aunt.

“What?”

“Throw the plate down”.

“But…but, it will break”, she uttered, scared.

“That’s the point”.

Jill let the plate go, reluctantly. It fell onto the ground and broke into numerous pieces of all sizes.

“Pick it up and try to place the pieces back together”.

Jill tried, but there were many smaller pieces that had fractured and were too small to find or stick back together.

“Now what do you see?”

“It’s broken,” Jill sighed, genuinely saddened.

“It’s not the same. It’s not as beautiful. You can see the cracks and even if it is glued, they will still be evident. And the colour seems almost faded because of it”.

“Isn’t it still the same plate, though?”

“I guess”. The little girl seemed perplexed.

“People are like this handcrafted plate,” her aunt finally explained the meaning of this exercise. Everyone is beautiful in their own unique way. You need to look closely to see all those details that make each person special. But people, contrary to objects, have feelings. If they are pushed aside for too long, like a plate on the edge of a counter, they will fall and break. And once they do, they will carry the scars within them. No matter how much they try to pull themselves back together, to survive and go on, the scars will remain, perhaps faded, but they are still there. Time won’t heal them; it will just make it easier to live with them”.

Jill stared, listening attentively to every word.

“Always be kind to everyone you meet. You don’t know what scars each person hides. And treat people as softly and sympathetically as you would want to be treated. Not everyone sees the world the same way, but kindness is universal”.

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The absence of time

It is the one thing we all complain of constantly. Of not having enough. Of passing by too quickly. Of not moving along quickly enough. It is what we anxiously count down with, what we nostalgically look back to, and what we constantly fear will run out too soon.

Time is both a friend and a foe. For the latter it is obvious – it is always the one to betray you. It is never enough to do all the things you want; to enjoy all the hobbies you keep yourself occupied with; to saturate your memories and your heart with the people you love. Time will always take something away from you.

But on the other hand, time is your friend. There are people who state that all they have is time. Moaning that days never pass, that everything seems endless. In unpleasant situations, this is the predominant feeling. For if you are having fun, time indeed seems to fly.

Sometimes you need time to yourself. To simply sit in silence and be. To, in a sense, meditate. To listen to what it is you truly desire at the moment. To heal. Even if they do say time heals all wounds, it is not always true. For some wounds never truly heal. People don’t wound you. They leave marks, memories, imprints, maybe even scars on your soul and these cannot be washed away with the passing of time. They may be pushed back into the distant drawers of your mind, but they are never truly forgotten. These are the moments that you cannot explain with words. Not because you lack the vocabulary. But because the words to adequately capture your sensations for them do not yet exist. It is moments like this when you feel a flood of emotions stream through your veins, when all you can do is stand still and surrender to the trickling of tears down your flushed cheeks. It is moments like these, however, that you will remember forever, because these are the ones that feel like an infinity in a predetermined expiration date.

Time is not to blame for the mistakes we make. For the relationships that end, for the choices we didn’t take. We may blame the circumstances, the synergies, the timing, the lighting, or anything that we may easily accuse. But like Cassius says in Act I, Scene II of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…”

We live in a shattered world. One from which we constantly try to hide. In the illusions that things are not so bad as they seem; in the allusions that people are better than we deem them to be; in the desperate need to believe that everything will be all right in the end. Even if we are racing against a ticking clock.

Because sooner or later we will learn that nothing lasts forever. People leave like ocean currents. There is no truth. There is no time. All there is, is now. And what we chose to do with it.