I no longer have expectations from people. I no longer wait for anything extraordinary from them.
Nothing special.

Just a compassionate glance in a moment of need, a handshake — even a formal one — during the holidays, a little kindness when there is reason for it, the granting of a little space so that I too may breathe, as every human being needs.

Yet often, very often, not even these things happen, and that hurts me. I suffer not because my expectations were not fulfilled, nor because certain people fell short of the great image I once had of them. For a long time now, I have tried not to form fixed ideas about anyone, because I believe it is a kind of slavery to confine people within limits and categories, even the noblest ones.

Every time I fail to truly meet with people, I hurt.

Of course, acting “wisely,” I could do what so many people, perhaps most, prefer to do. I could label others as toxic, ignore them, become highly selective, learn to choose only companions, circles, and friends who suit me well.

But I refuse to do that. I find it deeply degrading, both for myself and for life as I understand it. Instead, I insist on living through my failures with people, and on hurting. Because in this way I remain open to everyone, rather than selective and closed within whatever feels comfortable to me.

In this almost utopian way, I continue to live with the voluntary illusion that one day I may truly meet people, even if only in these small and ordinary things. A compassionate glance in a time of need. A holiday handshake. A little kindness and a little space to stand and rise together above the frozen ground of indifference.

So here I remain, a grown man now, still hurting from my failures with people, because this pain keeps my heart open without forcing it to be so. It keeps the sensitivity of my soul in bloom, the thirst of both spirit and body for human connection alive and insatiable.

Better a pain that never passes than a selective life, armored in comfort, indifference, and the safe company of only a chosen few.

“The houses I had were taken from me” — George Seferis
Egg tempera on wood, 25 × 35 cm.