Frames That Divide Us

 

"Do not frame the moments  our lives intertwined. There are a billion instances before that have brought us here to now.  We will need a lifetime more to share the whole of the story if you are so brave and inclined." CMH

She is ninety-five years old now, living alone.  Her husband has passed and her truest companion now is a small dog named  Precious.  He waits eagerly this day for his new, young dog walkers to take him for his Tuesday morning walk. The young women enter the house for the first time and take in their surroundings.  There are a few nameless faces framed on the walls throughout the room.  The smiling face of their client and her dog on a family room pillow. It will become a regular thing to enter after each walk when invited to share a moment, a bit of light conversation while each week daring to ask a few more questions to fill in the missing life story that cannot be found in the current frame before them.

This week after accidentally breaking the glass on a framed sea glass picture, I decided I would use the wooden frame to take pictures of various things outside. I did several of my plants in the garden and took one to add to an Instagram story.  I decided against sharing the rest, realizing that the context would be missing or the creative point and the back story would be lost.  The story of how proud I was of the growth of these plants under my care, how some of those we were sure would not make it had developed beautiful foliage and blooms despite the odds.   The framed versions were best as mine to be appreciated.  This reminded me of how much of the story is missing from a single frame which in this story,  becomes my metaphor for the instances  our lives connect with one another. 

Every morning I have gone for a run this summer, I have encountered a squirrel  on  a tree in the same spot. There are several more racing up and down the tree but this particular one is missing its big bushy tail. Assuming it is the same one I see each time, I start to wonder what her story was before this little frame of time we met.  Was life different as a squirrel without a tail and was it born with out one or what  happened to cause the loss? There must be so many adaptations she has come to make as a result and I think of how she manages to stay warm or if it makes protection from the elements or predators more challenging.

Maybe you sometimes wonder about the various frames of other people's lives you witness or interact with and willingly and unwillingly become a part of. We often think we know the whole person before us but we are only being welcomed into this current frame of the now.

One of the same young women in the frame my words created, sitting on the couch, walking the sweet dog, is also the young woman that some may have framed at the local thrift store, struggling with autism overwhelm, and a meltdown. Seeing either of these frames may have defined a very different person without the integration of the whole story beyond the frames. 

If we continue to frame our moments that cross with another, we are only using our judgment to make sense of the story we see, bringing to it our own bias, experience, or lack of.  In this story, we are missing the elements that create understanding which leads to compassion and awareness.  We are forgetting to integrate the whole person before our encounter or the one that we may never meet again. 

However these unpredictable experiences have shaped our reality and family, we all  have similiar experiences and the  opportunity to see beyond the framed picture that others see and our experiences  can nudge us to look for the real stories of others.  As it happened this week, my husband was driving back from outside the city limits and his path crossed with a young woman and two bags filled with all of her belongings on the side of the road. It was 30 degrees celsius and she dropped the bags and herself in a disheveled pile of resignation. He drove past before turning back to ask the woman how she was and she said she was hot, lost, and hungry. As she muttered to herself, he went against his initial feeling about the frame in front of him and asked how he could help. He sought  her story beyond what he saw. She asked if he could drive her to a center in the uptown. A center he knew to be for shelter and treatment.   He agreed and she settled herself in the back of our vehicle, clutching the two bags of all of her belongings.  She did not agree to share her name and they drove in silence.   When the car stopped she was on her way. Frames of lives intertwined with such a small part of the story.   

I assume that one of the many reasons people write is to tell stories beyond the initial frame, to contemplate the bigger picture and the minutiae of details.   Many of us share our lives like picture frames worthy of being showcased on walls and social media posts. We do this so frequently and habitually that we may begin to craft a pseudo-reality of the one we are living.  Those that courageously offer a view outside of the frame, we may believe to be oversharing and we encourage them to discern what stories are meant to be private or sacred . Many indeed  are sacred and I loved  how a favorite podcaster explained this. She said to make sacred is to make holy and her opinion was that maybe we honor our stories when we share them and we are saying they are sacred enough for others to know.  The same may be said for those that are private.  The raw universal moments we all experience don't need to always be kept private. When we share  we are normalizing the experiences  for others and creating an inclusive connection but if we don't offer the stories that are ours to tell, if we are influenced by the should and should nots, we may be left with too many empty frames and feelings of shame, isolation or disconnect.   

As you stand in a group of ten individuals whose paths converge with your own, they may all have us in very different, unique frames. Some because of the timing in our lives and our own growth and circumstance and some because they were comfortable with the image they created while filling in the missing details.  As we wrestle with our stories and wonder if it is too private to share, ask yourself if someone else may benefit from hearing your honesty, realness, and the ways that we are all the same, and then in your own way, with your chosen people, begin to share it one frame at a time.