"Scaly Dan"

I have this thing where I like to live in other peoples lives sometimes. I really enjoy getting out of my realm to partake in someone else's daily endeavors. I observe them and their surroundings, what they do, and how they do it. I like to get involved as though I were a fixed part of their normal world. Almost like a "fly on the wall," except I'm a living being that's actually incorporated. I love it because everyone is so eccentric and quirky in their own way. This morning I didn't even have to step foot out of my normal to get a glimpse at someone else's life. I just had to listen and I was there.

For the past month or so, this man has been living in my house with us. That sounds odd; He's not just a random man, he's been my step dad's best friend since junior high. He comes and goes as he pleases and most of the time that he has been here I have hardly noticed him. I'm too busy, right? Funny how the most intriguing things are right under your nose. He's always been such a funny guy with a really dry sense of humor, but that's about all I ever thought of him. Just recently I started getting really interested in the man. I've been assuming that day in and day out he has been tagging along with my step dad to work, but that wasn't quite the case. I asked him, "What do you do during the day?" He told me all about the day he had just had. He floats around from place to place with no schedule, staying however long because it doesn't matter; He hasn't any plans. He meets all these different people, he loves their stories, and he told me that he writes them down in a book so he won't forget their names because, he said, "People like to be called by their first name."

I felt like I was reading one of the books that I spend hours reading alone, but this is an actual man living in my house that I have been interacting with. I didn't have to seclude myself with three hundred pieces of paper drenched in print for this kind of enlightenment. I realized he is a factual representation of the fictional books I read all the time.

He was bouncing around with his stories and it was slightly hard to follow, but I did. I wondered if he was making nervous conversation, or if he was genuine and that's what he really wanted to talk about. I wondered if he felt like he was simply talking to an ear that would listen, or if, through my answers, he was reading my life story. That seems so weird to say.. If you met him, you'd think I made this whole thing up. This man seems like the farthest thing from the person I'm describing, but they are one.

About talking to all these different people throughout time, he said, "I've been hearing the same stories about what life is like for the past 30 years and they're all the same, but I like to hear the different opinions."

I was just thinking about that exact thing yesterday. How, really, everyone tries so hard to sum up life and 'what it's all about.' We all have clever ideas, some more clever than others, but I noticed that we can't find an end. We're always conjuring up new ideas and new 'what it's all abouts.' When we hear a different opinion, or see a better outlook, we morph a little. We never really come to a complete end.

So then I thought, "Well, if we never will come to an end, why do we spend so much time thinking about it?"

I decided that maybe it's because it's all we've got. We're finite beings living in something much, much larger than us. We really can't help but try to wrap our minds around everything. And we never will. But isn't that the absolute beauty of it? It wouldn't be so intriguing or so worth thinking about if we could figure it out, right?

At this point in time, I just know that I love people. And that, to me, right now, is what I think life is 'all about.'