Life in a Nutshell

Life in a nutshell. Great song. I love BNL, but the whole concept of tying your life up into one neat little package is difficult. People are complicated.

Take for example my friend from Cambridge. Haven't seen him in years...almost an excommunication, of sorts, and yet when I talk to him or email him it's like we were before he left. Now, there are things that he's done that I know nothing about, me as well, so trying to tie us up in a nutshell would be fruitless (I mixed a metaphor, or a fruit and a nut...literary trail mix). We are too far gone to be where we were fifteen years ago, but we accept our points of divergence and move on.

I have another friend who compulsively pushes away people who are close to her, choosing, rather, to run through her own personal hell solo. Now I'm sure she's tried to enlist help from people, but, for whatever reason, in the long run she resists and spirals along alone, bombadiering down the slopes and cliffs and crevaces of her own issues. No nutshell can tie up all of her secrets or her complexities. That's life.

Strange. Yet, a nutshell, if you can get one, I suppose is handy for collecting all of your problems and anxieties and summing you up nicely. Maybe they're good for helping you put it all in perspective, too. I'll let you know when I get mine.

Last stanza of BNL's song...

I fell down
With no one there to catch me from falling
Then she came round
And only her tenderness stopped me from bawling my eyes
out
Im ok...

Those guys are optimists, too!