Musing

[written and published from Calgary]

-10C/15F, heavily overcast; fog gave way to more light snow, Gusta is happy with it but I would really like some sunshine . . our walk uneventful; some days I think she spends a lot of her sniffing time investigating where she pee’d the day before

lots of people come and go in my life, but some are for keeps, for keeping . . they are the keepers; how did they get that way - how did they rise from the many people I encounter to be so important, so loved, so integral to my life . . how did they become keepers?

this quote has been on my mind, not just because it seems to be true but because I wonder about how it factors into those relationships I have; ‘woman’ or ‘child’ or ‘friend’ would be interchangeable for ‘man’ . . I am sure Goethe meant it to be:

“Treat a man as he is, he will remain so. Treat a man the way he can be and ought to be, and he will become as he can be and should be.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

maybe we see what we expect; in other words, when we think someone’s motive are pure and clear, we see them that way or, when we believe someone’s motives are impure, suspect and reproachable . . that is what we find because that is what we are looking for

and, because we all have a mix of all those things within us

sometimes my expectations are totally off-base, taking me down a silly path; rather than examining people for what I see, what I find, what I can un-earth, I should spend more time asking ‘so, tell me what you would like me to know about you’; I think I’ll get more interesting answers that way . . not based on what someone expects I want to hear, but based on who they are and how they feel

I have found (but somehow keep forgetting) that spending too much time trying to figure out others is exhausting – physically and emotionally; if my expectations of someone are too low, I dismiss them as unimportant; if my expectations are too high, then I must realize no one can live up to them . . . though, when I wasn’t looking, some people in my life just soared way beyond all my greatest expectations . . those are our keepers, forever, for always

Mark Kolke
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