The Months Around It
Anyone Else?
There are people who will tell another person they love them and still know surprisingly little about the ordinary life that person is living. They may know the work, the paintings, the writing, the music and the ideas. They may know what moves them and even recognize what they miss when it disappears, while knowing very little about the person responsible for any of it.
We place enormous importance on intensity when we think about intimacy. We remember what people say when they are moved, the declarations they make, and those rare moments when another person seems unforgettable. The ordinary months surrounding those moments receive much less consideration, although they may tell us considerably more. A person can be unforgettable in a moment and almost entirely unknown over time.
Perhaps one of the simplest measures of intimacy is not what someone says, but what they remember to ask. “How are you, really?” is an ordinary question, but there is a considerable difference between asking it out of convention and asking because another person’s life has remained in your thoughts. Genuine curiosity requires some memory of the life that has continued in your absence. It means remembering what mattered to someone, wondering what became of it, and caring enough to ask without first being reminded.
People can be attracted to particular parts of another person without ever developing the capacity to know the whole. Attraction can easily be mistaken for intimacy when it is intense enough, as can admiration and recognition. There is nevertheless a considerable distance between finding someone compelling and actually knowing them, and it may be greater than most of us care to admit.
Being someone’s muse, fascination, confidante, or beautiful idea is not the same thing as being their friend.
Artists encounter this in an interesting way because the work often goes ahead of the person who made it. Someone may become familiar with the paintings, the writing, the ideas, the music, and even the strange little things an artist collects and shares. Art reveals genuine things about its maker, sometimes things that would be difficult to communicate in any other form, and this can produce a powerful sense of familiarity. It is possible, however, to know someone’s expression intimately without knowing very much about the ordinary human life from which it came.
There is a human being behind the work, and that human being may be considerably less visible than the work itself. Someone may care deeply about what another person creates because of what it awakens in them, yet never become especially curious about the person doing the creating. The distinction is difficult because the affection need not be false. What was felt may have been entirely genuine while still being limited to a particular part of another human being.
The same thing happens outside art. People become attached to qualities in others that answer something in themselves. They value the person who listens, understands, makes them laugh, gives them courage, offers good advice, or remains available when life becomes difficult. It is possible to know exactly where comfort can be found in another person without developing much curiosity about the life of the person providing it. This does not necessarily require cruelty or deliberate selfishness, but it does reveal something about reciprocity.
Reciprocity has very little to do with constant contact. For a long time, I thought friendship was a constant, something maintained daily or at least frequently, but I no longer believe frequency tells us very much about the substance of a relationship. Two people can disappear into their separate lives for months, meet over drinks once a year, and spend two hours in conversation that remains with them for months afterward. Other people can speak every day and know remarkably little about one another.
What matters more to me now is whether the time between conversations has left behind genuine curiosity. Someone remembers where another person was going, what frightened them, what they were trying to finish, what they hoped would happen, or what they loved enough to pursue, and eventually wants to know what became of it. These are ordinary details, but their ordinariness is precisely what gives them value. They are evidence that another person’s life continued to exist in someone’s mind while the two were apart.
There is a particular kind of disappointment in wanting something for years and finally receiving it, only to discover that it was never what you needed. Beautiful language can contribute to that confusion, as can the experience of being intensely wanted. Being wanted momentarily can resemble being known over a longer period of time, particularly when the moment is powerful enough. Time usually makes the distinction clearer because ordinary life eventually replaces intensity, and what remains has to survive without the assistance of a remarkable moment.
This does not mean that love must be constant or that friendship requires an accounting for every absence. People have grief, families, work, illness, marriages, children, distance, obligations, disasters and private difficulties that may never be visible to anyone else. Understanding the limitations of other people is part of loving them. There is, however, a point at which continually understanding everyone else’s limitations requires ignoring one’s own.
Perhaps that is where the distinction between language and action becomes most useful. Words are not meaningless. They can be extraordinary, and they can cross years, countries and circumstances in ways that very little else can. They can alter the course of a life. They can also describe a relationship more beautifully than the relationship is actually being lived.
I used to give language the greater authority because language seemed capable of expressing what ordinary behavior could not. I am less certain of that now. There are things people may never be able to articulate particularly well that become perfectly clear in the way they behave, just as there are magnificent things people can articulate that never become visible anywhere else.
Sometimes the only sign of love from anybody on this planet is in what they do, not what they say.
There is peace in understanding this on a very profound level.
Marni Fraser
0904.2026
Image | 2026
