The Couch.

Everyone loves comfortable furniture. Everyone loves nice furniture. And then there are those people who just generally love furniture in general. They spend their Sunday afternoons flipping through the Crate & Barrel catalog, or the Ikea catalog, or watching shows like Design on a Dime, or Top Design.

Well, while on occasion I have spent a lovely afternoon with an Ikea or Crate & Barrel catalog on my lap, there is one piece of furniture that has captured the hearts of many.

A couch.

The story of this couch is quite remarkable. Born of the fantastic website “craigslist” this couch came into our lives almost randomly. In the beginning, it was never really seen as anything more than somewhere to sit. Couches have to be in living rooms otherwise there is no real way to “live” in said room. And so the couch was purchased and set up in a beautiful apartment in West Los Angeles dubbed “HQ.”

The way “HQ” came to be is a story to be told another time. As for the couch, with its future a bit uncertain came into our home, and performed its job quite well by providing many seats for many, many friends and family. Let me just say, this couch is probably the most comfortable couch you will ever meet. It hugs you, invites you to sit, lay, and relax on it as long as you’d like. But also in many cases longer than you anticipated because of its incredibly high level of comfort.
This brown wonder has become a part of our lives. It has been there for many people when they have no where else to sleep. It has been there whenever it has been called upon to sink into in times of exhaustion. It has been climbed on, laid on, sat on, hugged, fell upon, etcetera. But moreover, it has become a staple in not just our everyday lives because we live with it, at this point, we do not know how to live without it.

The couch never complains when there are way too many people on it than it was made for, or when there’s crumbs that fall into its cracks, or when it’s too loud in the apartment, or when drunk people fall all over it. The couch never asks questions, or judges, or doubts anyone. And granted it is an inanimate object, the couch has made all the difference in making an apartment a home, making strangers friends, and simply making everyone more comfortable.

We love you couch. Never change.

Erasers.

I teach children these days. I always thought it was so cliché when people would talk about the wonders of children, and how they can teach you so much more about the world than you could ever imagine.

Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say children can teach adults everything about the world, but I have had a quick life lesson with one of my students. His name is Jorge. And while he’s a whiz at math, he has trouble in spelling and reading. Which is where most of my work is done. He had to put vocabulary words into a sentence and he was having trouble spelling words in the sentence. I would tell him to sound it out, or use the dictionary, because we’re not supposed to just straight out give them the answer. (At least not all of the time.) He got frustrated and gripping his pencil said to me, “Man, I always make too many mistakes!” And for some reason, without hesitation I replied to him cheerily, “Well that’s why you have an eraser.” And with that he was fine and carried on with his work no longer frustrated with making mistakes, knowing he could use his eraser and they’d be gone forever.

But when you get older, your mistakes don’t have to do with spelling “rural” or addition and subtraction, and an eraser can’t help you. When you get older your mistakes have to do with your life. Your mistakes can’t be erased, and while they may be forgotten, that is only if you’re lucky.

I guess the point of the matter is, why can’t things be more simple? Why can’t we love each other enough to have this big eraser where we all forgive and move on?

Maybe that’s too idealistic, but maybe a little idealism is what we need from time to time. And maybe getting older isn’t about trying to erase your mistakes, but it’s about being grown up enough to know when to let go of the sheet that’s marked up beyond recognition. Because maybe, just because you don’t have an eraser to permanently get rid of your mistakes, it doesn’t mean you can’t grab a brand new clean sheet of paper and just start over.

Just enjoy the music.

All she had wanted was to hear it back. Three words, eight letters, that is all. She would’ve done anything to hear it. Actually, she did close to everything to hear it, and it never happened. But it was alright. She had known what she was getting into in the first place. She knew that it was more likely that she’d end up getting hurt and left than ending up even remotely happy. She knew that it was much more likely that he would find any reason to push her away. She knew that there was no way he would want her for even close to forever. But she couldn’t help it. She put herself in that situation anyway. One in which she just gave it her all, and waited for some kind of tiny recognition, that she knew would never come. Because with him, it was only her faults that were focused on, and everything else she had given of herself was merely ignored. She kept giving anyway. Because for her, it was better to simply be needed even in the tiniest of ways, than to be nothing to him at all.

There are people in our lives who change us. They make us better, make us stronger, make us kinder, make our lives more worth living. And for a while, if you’re lucky, their presence in your life enhances it so, that it is almost as if all the beauty and good in the world has suddenly been revealed to you. If you’re lucky they teach you patience, and how you get more out of doing things for others than doing things for yourself. These people make you into the person you were meant to be.

He had changed her. He had, time and time again, broken her down forcing her to build herself back up. And this had made her better. It made her more patient, understanding, a better friend, a better sister, a better daughter. And in turn, she hoped that she was better for him.

But the most curious, and painful thing, was that he didn’t see it. Everyone around could sense, and see, and know how she poured everything she had into being whatever he needed. Everyone knew how much she cared for him. Everyone but him. Whether or not he ignored it, or disregarded it all, or was simply oblivious didn’t matter. Because at the end of the day, everyday, no matter what, whether he knew it or not, whether he cared or not, whether he had hurt her or not, he was it for her.

All songs come to an end, or so they say, but that’s no reason to not enjoy the music.