Twisting alleys

The surface of anything is a simple thing. A surface can be flat, smooth, rough, soft, hard or bumpy. It’s what we see, the initial picture; the face. It’s what we think we understand at a glance.

Is that it though?

Is life as simple as the surfaces of what is immediately put in front of our eyes.

Are we so simple, that we think we understand everything from a glance.

The answer is a complicated one

Because it depends on the person

We can choose to look deeper than the surface, to delve into the depth of life without fear of what we might find. To know and understand that not all we might see will be good.

Or we can choose not to.

The world is an overwhelming intricacy of rivers and tunnels, of rises and sinking pits, of shallow marshes that give way to gaping caverns. None of which we see without a little effort. Every single thing that is part of this world has countless wires, cogs, upside down topsy turvy things. The most complex of which is us. Every person we see on the street has all of this and more, countless roads lined with memories, countless shelves packed with stories. Endless mazes of different meanings, different views, small narrow corridors of secrets, not all of which we understand; not all we have to.

Over the centuries we’ve tried to understand it; life. Each person competing to come up with one single answer that will quieten all questions. An answer that will put all our minds at ease. The result of which has produced thousands of theories and thousands of reasonings. Truth is though, that life cannot have just one meaning, because the meaning differs between each and every individual; and it should be understood that not all questions can we answered.

That does not mean to say, of course, that all those thousands of theories are not true. Who are we to judge what is true or false. When one theory to one person might be true, and to another it could be false.

What we do have that is always true, however, is the journey that we have. Each little moment, each decision and thought that over the course of your life has built up into those little tunnels or alleys. Built into a constantly growing and changing creature that is you.

That is something you have that no one else does. Something truer than true (stolen). Because no one has exactly the same creation as you.

Sometimes we expect too much of people; we expect to them understand parts of our journey without realising that we may not understand theirs. Sometimes we don’t even understand our own journey, and that’s okay too. Because as long as you understand that it is your journey, that’s enough. Allow yourself to smile if people do understand it, but don’t cry if they don’t; because do you understand the stories of everyone else? No. Maybe they won’t understand, but do you need them to?

Life is just us, running and rolling through these tunnels, without a notion of where we’re going or why, catching fragments of conversation, snippets of information, glimpses of images. Some of which we love, some we hate, and some we simply don’t understand. Be happy with the journey you are on, even in the moments that seem to suffocate you, because each moment is a building block to the creation of you.

It’s too complex to know everything, to understand all that goes on in each tunnel and each dip of road. There is no possible way to discover everything about this world, but where would we ever get to if we didn't atleast try.

Alayna Rennie-Cook - year unknown