Necessary People

“Some of you were lessons, some of you were poetry, and all of you were necessary. Either way, you gave me a story to tell. No royalties will be issued. Wishing you all the best (but mostly therapy).” Cara Alwill

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I can hear Fergie’s Big Girls Don’t Cry being blasted by my neighbor. She has the best taste in music. I swear we would be friends.

I think often about the paths that cross in this life. There are the friends, family, acquaintances. (Like, where is that girl who loved fairies and fantasy novels in high school? Or the girl in jr. high who would pick at her eyebrows until they were all gone?) This reflection was amplified as I read Cara Alwill’s latest book.

We reflect on how things started and how things ended. We think about whether we were right about people from the beginning. We wonder if people did their best by us and vice versa.

That saying that says people do the best they can is delusional. It’s something we say to mask reality. I don’t believe that. Some people are really trashy. I have seen people purposefully give zero effort.

For example, yesterday marked the end of an era for Sam Rosen and the NY Rangers. The Rangers won the President’s Trophy last year, and this year, they were one of the worst teams (with the team intact at the beginning of the season— same people). They didn’t do their best. They gave up. (Exception of the fourth line). People do this in life all the time. They settle for mediocrity.

This whole web of stories and lives shapes us. It softens us or hardens us. Sometimes, it’s more of an automated choice, a dangerous seeking of the familiar, and a method of survival. Survival never justifies anything, though.

I feel like we move through life slowly making decisions that either bring us more into alignment or more out of alignment. Alignment with what, you may ask? With our values. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what you profess. What matters is whether your life matches those ideas. We either do the hard thing or we start desensitizing ourselves to who we want to be and fall short. We are always moving in some direction; we are seldom truly stuck.

In the end, we keep making choices and rubbing elbows with people. Some we want to stay with; others we need to escape. Even the ones we leave behind teach us something about the world or our simple act of leaving builds the person we are. And little by little, our stories unfold. Our characters keep evolving.

We keep writing the pages until we reach the last one.