You Have No Idea

You have no idea who I am, nor I you.
We negotiate life at the wrong speed and in the wrong direction,
and wonder how we get lost, all the while failing to make any
meaningful connection.
I spend time with you at work, bump into you in the grocery store,
in a bar, and we form opinions.
Opinions that are only true to that moment.
Every morning I begin life as a different person, every night I
reflect upon my wounds and my victories.
Yet you confine me to a box in your mind because its easier than
interpreting my emotions, my nuance, and I do the same to you.
We take life and strip it down so we can have even a shot at
dealing with it, but when we do this to each other we are
committing a heinous crime.
Being human is complex, it is rich, it is tangled in contradictions
from which the beauty, the essence of being alive, emanates.
Summarizing someone in one word, one phrase, is like saying
it tastes like chicken.
Let's make an effort, you and me, one on one.
We will never truly know one another and that is somehow fitting,
but maybe we can enrich our lives by surprising ourselves
with our inconsistencies.