Life through a Window

My beautiful window. I can't pass a day without having opened you to peer out into the wide world. I see terrible things, some beautiful things, and some things I probably shouldn't see. But it's the world, even though sometimes it's a bit caricatured and exaggerated. I admit that without you I wouldn't be half the person I am today.

My window, through you I saw some amazing people. People I learned from, loved, lost, and found again. It's not easy living my life through you, and sometimes it is scary. I remember first turning to you when I felt tired and listening to the conversations people had outside. Life is a bit like that too. You have some people who are loud and brash, who want and get all the attention. Then there are the quiet ones, the "watchers" as Le Carré once put it. They are the ones who see what people were, what they become, and how they got there. They see the world through windows, and they shake their head at the folly of it all. 

I like to think of myself as a watcher, as somebody who wrote down what happened in these days. I opened my window and saw the world exploding outside and I watched how people went crazy. It hasn't been easy, but when the ashes cool and the smoke drifts away I'll be there, looking at you. Judging. Yes, it isn't enough to be a passive observer, to be swept away by the oceans of life and time. We make judgements all the time, about each other, about ourselves, and about the things that happen to us. Sometimes the judgements are bad, but occasionally they are good. And they get better with time. I've pronounced my judgement on this time, through my little window. I wanted to damn it all to hell. And yet out of it a few glittering souls shone through. It's just too beautiful at times to damn, not when there is still hope and there is still goodness and beauty and kindness and all that is worth fighting for. So I sentence it to life. From my little window. And I'll sit here sipping my tea and watching you all, shaking my head and crying sometimes but mostly smiling. One day I will shut the window and walk out the door, melting in with everybody else. To disappear, and then maybe rest.