Last summer something peculiar happened. I was walking on the beach sort of absent minded when I came across something red floating in the water. Hardly a moment passed before I realized it was a rose petal. There was something unmistakably beautiful about it, but I continued to walk. Throughout the hour or hours that I continued walking, I kept coming across more and more petals, and leaves, as if several roses had been carefully plucked and tossed into the ocean.
Though many thoughts, lyrics and even a sort of music bled into my mind with the dreamy thoughts provoked by such an occasion, one pierced through them all like a shaft of light.
Who did this and why?
Stories. Everyone has one, they’re all so fascinating. However, one may never know every story, try as they may. It can take years of sleepless nights and tiring conversations to learn even a fraction of one person’s story, no doubt you hardly know anything about most the people you know best. In all honesty, we don’t even know that much about ourselves.
Though, all that said, there is the astoundingly beautiful moment when stories collide. Maybe you stumbled across her crying, maybe his notebook fell open in your face, maybe she lost her favorite necklace and panicked, asking you to help her find it, maybe you heard his song. The smallest of events can cause a spectacular thing to happen. All of a sudden, their eyes make sense to you. The deepest of colors and shiest of ways seem so natural and magnificent, because you finally understand. You’ve become connected.
I find it sad to imagine, that one could go through their entire life without truly connecting with someone in this way. No, I don’t mean by crying on every corner until someone finds you or throwing your notebooks in peoples faces, pretending to lose important things so you can tell their story or playing your life song on every roof. I mean by living and loving, like Christ did. You come across people, you find stories. You care. And when you care, you’ll find that people care about you too. Sometimes you can’t find answers by looking for answers, but by answering the questions that others have.
Like the rose petals, sometimes we connect with stories that we can only marvel and wonder at, we may never know what really happened, but that doesn’t mean we can’t see the beauty in it.
Though there are so many ways to stumble across a story, one of my most recent favorites would be through certain tv shows and movies. When well written, a segment of characters, music, scenes and plots can tell you a magnificent story and draw you in emotionally. You feel the pain of people you never knew, people who may very well have never existed, you love them, you watch them grow, you see them at their lowest. Through Merlin, Doctor Who, Sherlock and Lost, Clannad, I’ve come to see many stories, and I’m sure it doesn’t end here either, there are so many other stories out there…. Those particularly I’ve found to be absolutely amazing, and I love discussing them… But perhaps the most amazing thing about them is that even though the characters may not exactly exist, they’re very real, and they have something in common with everyone you pass each day. They have a unique and beautiful story, they’re important. I’d love to hear every story I can, when people open up their hearts, it frees something inside of them. Don’t make them regret telling you, try to understand, encourage them, love them. We were called to be so much more than this, living to live and one day die. We were meant to die to ourselves so that we could live and to the fullest, for the One who first loved us.
This is why I write. Connect, love, learn and stop judging. Live passionately for the Light. There’s no true goodness in all this darkness, it will devour you and keep going. You’re cherished.
~Tori Lynn
Thoughts from Hazel 