My Face... My Glass...

Read

Love Will Come To You Lyrics

here.

I guess I wasn't the best one to ask 
Me myself with my face pressed up against love's glass 
To see the shiny toy I've been hoping for 
The one I never could afford 


From the song "Love Will Come To You" by the Indigo Girls


Glass.  We press our noses against it and use our hands to shield the light from our eyes in order to get the best view of what lies on the other side.  We can move from spot to spot to get just the right angle.  But what we are looking at doesn't change.  It's the same view, really, from all sides.  The only thing that changes what we see is how we allow ourselves to look at it.


The song above has been one of my favorites for a long time.  For years, I thought it was written just for me, because that was how I viewed love, among other things.  Always something I was looking in on but couldn't ever have for myself.


Songs like this, on many lonely candlelit evenings, became the soundtrack of my life.  I would program my CD changer to play track after track of lonely heart anthems.  I would sit sometimes for hours letting gloominess have its way with me until I would either fall asleep on the couch or, more often than not, get hungry.  Then I would close the curtain on my dramatic play, wish my audience of none a safe trip home, and get on with fixing a snack.  Hunger trumps despondency when you are me.


Now, these years later, my play still opens for limited runs, usually with the same soundtrack, and for the same audience of none.  But it has been severely edited and the length cut.  Why?  I fall asleep easily, especially with music.  I get hungry often, regardless of music.  My attention span has shortened with age.  That's right.  My own depression bores me now.


I have changed.  


My face is indeed still pressed up against the glass a lot of the time, but what I see is completely different.  I can look at the same scene that I used to stare at during my musical interludes.  What I saw in the past was something beautiful and idealistic.  All that was visible was a bright and shiny object atop a pedestal in the middle of the room, the only light a brilliant spot from above to accent the elegance and draw attention to the object itself.  Now when I press my face up to the glass, what I see is still on the same pedestal, but it is not alone in the room.  The darkened spaces are exposed and I can see that attached to the object is an entire network made up of the things that make that object real and allow it to exist.  It is a tightly woven web of sacrifices and rewards, pain and joy, worry and peace.  All those things were there when I used to look, but I could only see what I thought I wanted.


We all have our own spaces inside the glass.  My side of the glass is cluttered with experiences and stories and lessons learned from well thought out plans and even more valuable lessons learned from stupid decisions.  The more you share those with others and learn from what they have to share, the more dark spaces you can start to illuminate.  It's all about learning.  And, in my opinion, laughing along the way.  I can find funny in almost anything.


That is the best thing about glass.  There is always something to see on the other side.  We can all take something away from pressing our faces against the glass.  Some can learn.  Some can laugh.  Then of course there are those who don't even realize there's a world on the other side of the glass.  They just like to see what their nose-print looks like or they like to breathe hot air onto it and write "hi" in the resulting foggy patch.  That's okay.  There's a place in my world for those people too.  At least they are having fun.


So feel free to put your face against my glass and see what I have to offer.  Feel free to leave fingerprints and face-prints.  That way I know someone was here.  I would, however, refrain from licking the glass.  You never know who has been breathing on it before you got here.