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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Oxymoronic Enigma

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How many opposites define a person? How is it the truth lies somewhere in the middle, when the middle feels so unfamiliar?

What words define you? I find I am a mess of oxymorons, though I find that word unappealing. Enigma is too sexy really, for what I am. I get frustrated, with my comfort in the fringes.

Social Hermit

Friendly Aloofness

Eloquent Rambler

Fearful Optimist

Middle-of-the-Road Extremist

Sometimes I connect with a person and we are so much alike that our words tumble in phone gripping giddiness. A conversation that doesn't know how to end. But the underlying fact that we are connecting over our tendency to live on the fringes is often courting a terminal friendship.

Today, a five minute phone message turned into an all morning internet research assignment, turned into an email tag, turned into an hour long phone call. How wonderful to find such a compatible voice living in my small town. Yet within our odd sameness are glaring opposites. That dance that happens when encountering other homeschoolers. "Are they 'my' kind of homeschooler?" It sounds divisive, but in the end it usually matters to someone.

It is so hard to believe that people with such a similar lifestyle, as in eating the same diet, parenting the same, cleaning the same, same hobbies, shopping habits, schooling, child-feeding, google-seeking, dress preference, nature-loving, family-centeredness, are people from different planets. Even as their minds form the same thoughts, mouths speak the same words, lips curl in perma-grin over such random discovery of each other - the deal is folding, the tide is turning, the prognosis grim.

So, where do you go to church? - is such a simple question for most people...

2 comments:

K said...

Your post, for me this morning, is almost like a dementor's kiss. Swwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuck! I feel the air whoooshing out past my lips. Why is it so hard to find one's people? One's everyday people beyond one's family?

candyn said...

Tis hard it's true. :)

I like the term 'one's everyday people'.