cover of book, stray birds R.Tagore (1916)

CHAPTER ONE - Rabindranath Tagore
WEEK NINE. conversation by clair and justine

 

9

Once we dreamt that we were strangers. We wake up to find that we were dear to each other   Tagore

                                                                            ~  ~  ~ 

we are all strangers, before we meet, mother and child, brother and sister, lover to lover.  that often amazes me.  how important people become. inyet everyone was  first a stranger.

there are so many hearts wandering around. so many strangers.

clair


In the past, i could never have imagined knowing him how i do now. All those years, just saying hello or occasionally a little smalltalk. It's funny looking back but wonderful too. We could never have got so close then and when things changed, so did we. i love that, love every aspect of it. i could never have predicted this and would never have wanted to. Waking up with him that first night, still just friends and feeling like i could trust him completely. For me, that was such an amazing feeling.
justine

yes, people, synchronicity, allowing thing to happen, naturally.  so beautiful when you are in this space. to allow. rather than force or even to direct... just to let it be, him be...just to let him in, it in...

clair

True, its so difficult in life to just allow things to happen. so often we feel that we have to be in control, or at least pretend to ourselves that we are are. But then being out of control can be a horrible feeling too. Perhaps, like so often in life it's about achieveing some sort of balance
justine

i remember, when i was a child and with my mum in the car and passing another car, driven by a man and me saying 'we could have just driven past by future husband then'.

i think at an early age the enormorty and possibitly of 'strangers' was in me.

when is someone not a stranger? when you smile at them a certain number of time? when you begin to speak to them? would someone be a stranger if you said nothing but started to kiss.  still a stranger?

and can you love someone you have never met or known of?

clair


Thats a pretty incredible thing you said to your mum in the car, no wonder it stayed with you.
Sometimes i wonder if there would be less hostility in the world if we weren't all strangers. So often, someone meets someone who they have a pre-judgement about and when they get to know that person, they're shocked to discover they don't fit their (often negative) stereotypes. perhaps if we humans all had discourse with others of different races/religion/sexualities, etc, it would break down at least some prejudice and there would be less hatred in the world.
Justine

it reminds me of a very cool experiment/study.  i'll tell you the coutry where it took place when remember it.

it took part in a library, but instead of getting out a book you got out a person. there was an index of all different people, different races, different cultures, differnt ages different backgrounds, different preferences in music, life style etc.  and people could get someone out in the hope that their prejudice would be challanged by actually meeting them.

v e r y good i reckoned.
clair

that sounds like a fantastic idea. such a simple way to get people to communicate and hopefully break through barriers

justine