Pockets

"We need much bigger pockets...We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families and our friends." 

Oskar Schell

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer

When I was younger, I, like Oskar, wished that people were more portable. However, I wished for shrinking people as opposed to enormous pockets.

I also wished that all houses were connected. I did not understand why people needed "privacy" or "space" and I did not understand why we could not just run from house to house at liberty (making friends and having play-dates and loving on one another).

I wish our world was made up of only "hellos" and never "goodbyes." I wish that with every hello we added another person to our clan so that by the end of one day we would be walking around in huge "hello clusters." Or a "hello magnet" where the more hellos (and more people) we gained the more powerful we were (and the more people and hellos we got) so that by the end of a week, the whole world would be in one hello/hola/konnichi wa group. And we would all be friends.

But more than that... I hate goodbyes because it contradicts one of my {many} [more cliche] mantras.

"Live every moment like it is your last."

For me, in order to live every moment like it is my last, I need everyone that I love around me. I need either a giant pocket or shrinking people. As I have neither, this way of living is a little tricky. I find myself living in between the times I am with the people I would (if I could) put in my pocket.

When I am forced {due to circumstances I cannot control, like Los Angeles traffic or another persons schedule, or the schedule of another person in the initial persons schedule [for example I want to hang out with Person 1 but Person 1 has to work their schedule around Person 2 who has to work their schedule around Russia... so I too have to work my schedule around Russia. Not to mention the fact that I want to hang out with Person 3 who has to work her schedule around Person 4 who has to work his schedule around the company with the ugly building across from the movie theater in Pasadena]}  into the unfortunate circumstance of having to goodbye [like this morning] I have to remove this person from my pocket and send him (or her) on his (or her) way... often away from me (or else they would just hitch a ride in my pocket). What if something happens? What if one of the googleplex of things that could happen to keep us separated were to actually happen? What if you were to get hit by a car? What if I were to eat something poisonous? What if you were abducted and taken to the planet full of trash?* If we lived in each others pockets I would get abducted too...

If we lived in each others pockets, we would never have to worry about traffic or schedules or goodbyes because we would always be together. I would be able to live each moment like it is my last... because in my last moment, I would be with everyone that I love.

As Sam reminded me, this is just life training for "not always getting MY way"

 ...because really, if I had it my way, life would be just one big dinner party in my pocket.

*For more on this story, please ask Sam