The reflection

Lately I have been thinking about how many versions of ourselves exist only in other people's memories. There is a vision of me that still lives in my grandmother's stories. A version that was small enough to hold someone's hand while crossing the road. A version that beleived every adult had all the answers. A version that no longer exists anywhere in someone's recollection m and then there is the version of me that lives in old classmates mind.

The quiet one or a loud one kr a awkward one or the funny one. Depending on who you ask they would all describe a different person. The strange thing is that none of them would be wrong. We spend so much time trying to define ourselves but the truth is that we are slightly different people to everyone we meet.

To one person you might me friend who helped them through a difficult year. To another you are simply someone they say next to once in a classroom. To some one else you are the reason they smiled on a bad day. You may not even remember the moment.

They might never forget it. I think that's what fascinates me most about being human. We leave peices of ourselves behind everywhere in conversations and in memories and in old photographs and in neesage buried deep inside forgotten phones. Sometimes I wonder how many people would still think about moments I have completely forgotten.

A joke I have made years ago or a peice of advice I did not realise mattered or a small act of kindness that felt ordinary to me. It is impossible to know.

May be that's beautiful. Because it means our lives touch each other in ways we rarely see. We are constantly influencing one another without realising it.

A teacher says something encouraging it and a student remembering it for ten years. A stranger offers help. And someone's faith in humanity is restored. A friend checks in at the right moment. A difficult week becomes bearable. Tiny actions. Invisible consequences.

Like stones dropped into the water creating riplles far beyond where they landed. The older I get the less I beleive life is made up of grand achievements. Most of us won't become famous. Most of us won't change the world in dramatic ways. History book will probably not remember our name.

But may be that is not the point. May be the oint is the people and the relationship and the moments and the countless small interactions that quietly shape a life. I think about the people who changed me. Many of them probably don't realize they did.

A teacher who beleived in me when I doubted my self and a friend who stayed with me when I doubted myself or a stranger whose kindness arraived exactly the right moment.

None of them knew they were becoming part of my story and yet they did. Just as we become part of other people's stories without knowing it.

There is something comfortable about that. The idea that our existence extends beyond what we can measure.