Collections

In life, people collect things. Some people collect as a hobby- coins, baseball cards, pieces of toasted bread resembling highly regarded religious figures. Others collect as a way to stay organized or involved in life- collecting data, facts, pictures of melting ice caps. One thing most individuals collect, almost without thought, is other people. Throughout life, an individual collects family in the form of parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, perhaps a spouse (and all the in-laws) and children, then their children to follow. He collects classmates, which are interchanged form year-to-year, save a few who he carries with him through those awkward adolescent years. He collects work colleagues, from quirky Joe in finance to Miranda, the lovely receptionist, and even Larry, the quiet loner in the cubicle 2 down, who remembered that his birthday was last Saturday, and that he loves red velvet cake. Again, these people will flit in and out of the collection, sometimes shining brilliantly like a rare un-circulated coin, and sometimes dully forgotten, like so many memos piled beside your computer.

I am not concerned with the people in my collection who drift in and out, who reside in a museum-like fashion, for a season or so, then move on, leaving behind memories, a few pictures, and a dinged bumper from when they accidentally rear-ended your car in the parking lot. The great concern lies on those permanent fixtures in life, the people in the collection whom you keep forever, or on the reversal, who refuse to leave. These people can be the greatest influence in a person's life. The can lift and support a person through his struggles, celebrate his triumphs, and laugh when he does something remarkably stupid (but not fatal). Again, these people can also hold him back, drag him down, and convince him that his dreams are unattainable. They can keep him from taking chances and branching out, cocooned in the safety of "old friends." They can betray him, yet rely on is goodwill to allow themselves back in his world- they can teach him to build a wall around his thoughts, his feelings, or his heart. These friends are dangerous, and not friends at all, but viruses, plaguing the collection, deserving to be obliterated, tossed aside, and forgotten. But yet they remain.

Why?