Couplets
Think Tank #38
Have you ever met a couple that’s so great together you can’t imagine how those two people ever functioned without one another?
Maybe, as a kid, you were pretty tame on your own, but had a friend who brought out the mischievous side in you.
Or maybe you’re naturally high-strung, but always feel at ease whenever you’re near your mom.
It’s strange, the way a pair of people (or even a group of people) can come together to become something that neither one of them would be on their own.
What is this? It’s something that’s kind of hard to pinpoint, isn’t it? What is that ‘you’ that you become only when one particular person is around?
It’s you, but it’s also something beyond you. It’s something beyond the other person, too. Like some unseen energy that the two of you can generate that acts upon both of you without even trying. Like an emotion, only more constant.
You can’t activate it at will. You can’t become the person that you are with your best friend or your sibling when you’re sitting on the couch with your husband.
There’s more that links humans together than we understand. ‘You’ as an individual are constantly in flux—not really an individual at all. You can’t divorce yourself from other people even if you try. Their energies will always be bouncing off of you, influencing you in ways you can’t understand.
In a way, this speaks to the interconnectedness of all life.
Maybe that’s why it hurts so much to grieve. In a way, when we lose someone else, we really are losing a significant part of ourselves.
It certainly brings a new meaning to the age-old warning to choose your friends wisely, lest you become them.
I know there’s some kind of sociological theory that attempts to explain this. Something about learning how to behave and unconscious cues or something. I’m not interested in that.
I’m talking completely metaphysical here. Spiritual ‘mumbo jumbo.’ When two people come together, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
What is that something extra that’s created?