One's Own Person

Everyone needs someone entirely their own, someone they can rightfully call "my person"—someone into whose chest they can press their head firmly and say without hesitation...here, in this very chest, is my home, my world.

Truly, everyone needs someone very close, someone they can reach out and touch at will, someone on whose shoulder they can rest their head and weep in profound exhaustion; someone in whose lap they can place the burden of all those fragments of sorrow gathered in their heart and rest comfortably for a while.

Everyone needs their own person—someone they can look in the eyes during times of weariness, melancholy, or the dark hours of loneliness and say without reservation...you know, I'm not well at all!

Seven and a half billion people on this earth, yet we cannot find a single shoulder to rest our heads upon, not one lap where we can deposit our sorrows for a while to lighten ourselves, and even when drowning in profound exhaustion, we cannot tell anyone...I am not well. My heart is deeply troubled.

All these fragmented words we cannot speak—how many nights we bend under our own weight, crushed by the pressure of words we've stored up inside us. No one will ever know that accounting.

One person of our own—believe me, just one person of our own, and sorrows split in half and become lighter, joys multiply and double. How many words fall like dried leaves for want of this one person, how the weight of sorrow becomes a hundredfold heavier than our bodies—no one will ever discover this.

Seven and a half billion people, yet we belong to no one; we all know each other, but none of us truly understands anyone else. We have so many stories to tell, yet we cannot find even one person to tell them to. All words vanish into thin air like camphor, so much happiness burns to ash like cigarettes—no one ever learns of this.

Just for lack of one right person, people weep so much...believe me, just for lack of one right person, people live such impoverished lives...they feel like that insignificant dried leaf, spending their entire lives in dread of disturbing someone's peaceful meditation with the rustling sound of their own fall.