I have been famished. I’ve been
utterly and despondently ashamed.
I used to ask for my eggs over hard,
but I’ve eaten them runny, and they
were just fine. While I’m not entirely
certain what I am saying to you here,
I can say for certain, with apologies
as it were, that it’s not about hunger.
Allow me, if you will (and you do,
gloriously, you do!), to take you
on an adventure. For years, I’ve
had this thing: I’d drop my friends
off, by ones and twos, etc., with a
tour guide. It was a beautiful tour
that lasted no more than a couple of
hours, and while there were different
guides at different times of the day, it
was the same exact tour each time, and
every time I’d go along, too, a tourist, an
audience member, just like my friends, ex-
cept I’d been on the tour countless times be-
fore. There would always be a nuanced differ-
ence or two, but I’d hear the same stories, we’d
traverse the same route and, with some adjustments
for the season or for the changes that occur in nature
on a regular and constant basis, we’d see the very same
sights. And each time I would be just as curious and just
as interested as I was at every tour previous to the present
one. Except I was as equally interested in observing my friends
along the way, seeing how each took to it, while also listening to
the guide, curious about the sights and the stories that went
along with what we saw, and all the while I’d be snapping pho-
tographs, making little mementoes of the occasion. What exact-
ly am I saying, telling you this, besides the surface of this one
diminutive anecdote? I wonder. Am I simply more interested, in
general, in being a participant than being a guide; am I more
of a climber than a sherpa, more student, less professor? Or
perhaps this aspect of me that I have just relayed to you
reiterates my geminian nature, revealing how I am so
often driven to be both and neither, all at once. I do
believe that these things are true about me. In fact,
I can say with confidence that they are. And I would
happily, were you even the least bit willing and inter-
ested, take the time to further elaborate upon these
truths about me, would of course be curious to hear
what you’d have to say about these propensities and
listen to where you think you generally reside on
such a spectrum; it’d be awesome to brainstorm
with you to come up with a list of the pros and
the cons of each of our respective ways of being
in life, and to collaboratively come up with ways
in which each of us could take this information
and use it to better our lives going forward. I
can envision a discussion such as this going
well into the night, perhaps all the way until
morning, as we branch out on various related
(or not) tangents, relishing every minute of
it and, upon parting ways for the night or
the day, feeling filled with life and awe and
questions and camaraderie because of it.
I should probably tell you, though, that
this isn’t really about any of that. I
believe that I am, in actuality, at-
tempting to illustrate here for you,
that the reason I brought this up,
is that with all that I am – which
is the sum of all of whatever it
is with which I am made up, and
that makes up me, I miss those
tourists, and I miss those sage
guides; I mourn the presence
of each and every one of them,
and am so very grateful that I
not only have had the serendipity
to have crossed paths with each and
all, but that on so many occasions I
had the wonderful pleasure of going
along on every small journey, every
moment of which was a gift that stays
with me, buoying me up every single day:
to have been along for the ride with you.
It has been pretty much everything, and
so I give thanks, in my very small way;
it’s the best way I know how, for now.
