Infectious

People are an infection. You, me and everyone around you. Family. Friends. Colleagues. We're all an infection.

We infect ourselves and one another, just by doing what we do every day. We infect each other with emotions. Love. Hate. Sadness. Frustration. Despair. Anger. Rage. We infect each other with kindness. Jealousy. Fear. Envy. Happiness. Tyranny. Malice. Violence. We do this all the time.

But the most important and significant thing we infect each other with, is the need. The need for things. Need for companionship. Emotions. Love. The need for each other. More imperatively, the need to exist.

Because without each other, what are we? Who are we? If you were the only person left on God's green earth, who would you be? Who would know you? See you? Walk with you? Be with you? It is other people who define your existence. Of course, the right to exist lies with you, but if you existed for no one, what good is that?

We infect each other with the need to be with each other. It's something that isn't the basic need of human beings, if you really think about it. But we have come to the point where we need each other, and we can't have it any other way, or we will go insane. No man is an island. No one wants to be alone, even if they have the courage to say it out loud. We need people, to feel alive.

But at the same time, we have so much ability to hate one another. A lot of times for the smallest of reasons. I know this for a fact, because I've felt it so many times. I'm not proud of it, but that's the way it is. We hate the same people we need. We take them for granted a lot. We love them dearly, but we let them down again and again and again. And as much as we want, and as hard as we try, we can't hate everyone forever. Maybe it's because God won't let us. So right now, I don't know if the desire to be alone is worth keeping, because we're not strong enough to refuse reaching out for others at some point. Stuck between the need for company and the desire for isolation.

We are all messed up, aren't we?

Went shopping today. Picked up a few things that I was looking for, while nursing my badly bruised patience. I wish I had more of that. I wish more of us had more patience too. Then maybe we won't try so desperately to be alone while being surrounded by people.