You choose, You lose

They say couples are made in Heaven. 

But so is thunder and lightining.

I asked myself this question one sleepless night. How can you tell if the person you like is a fuse or a muse? No way to really tell, because first you need to understand what I'm talking about. So, here goes nothing.

See, in life there's people who you really like. Whether it is for their looks or their charm, you are absolutely attracted to them. This person lights your fuse, if you catch my drift. I like to refer to those people as "fuses". On the other hand, there's that person who you grow attached to. You might even like him or her so much to the point that they inspire you. You learn to love, cherish and grow accostumed to them. They become some kind of a "muse" to you. Life is never the same after meeting our muse.

My question is: Shouldn't we learn to tell the difference before we get confused or, even worse, hurt? A close friend of mine asked me who was my muse, since I was apparently inspired at the moment I brought up the subject. (Sleep deprivation has that effect on me). All I could say is I'm tired of watching everyone run around after fuses, confusing them for muses, and never being able to set them apart. Some doubts came up during our discussion. He asked me when does a fuse become a muse, and for that matter, can a muse ever become a fuse when they throw themselves off the pedestal you've built up?

Well, a muse is just a fuse who turned into a muse, right? You can never really tell right off the start if you've found that person. You first get to know them and then only time can tell. The sad thing is we tend to meet a person who comes off as a muse, we open up to them and guess what? It was only a fuse wanting to be lit. And boy do most of us get burned when we try to.

We also meet muses we tend to blow off by assuming they're fuses. And I guess every fuse may not turn into a muse for you, but it can perfectly happen for somebody else. Maybe you have a muse right now, someone who really inspires you and changes your world for the better, or even for worse. But... that doesn't necessarily mean you're THEIR muse.

We definitely can't tell the difference until our head is under water and our heart is too far gone. Not knowing the difference can get down right confusing...but boy, ain't it amusing? And either way we choose to go, for better or for worse, we always lose. 

Have we met?

Every single day we meet a stranger. It can happen casually or formally. But either way, it's a new person that we've never met before. Someone we've maybe noticed blending in the crowd, but never really paid much attention to. All of this mounds up to that very single day when life forces you two to greet. Right there in that very moment is that we open up to strangers as if we knew each other since forever. But...Why?

What we've yet to realize is that the only thing separating us from getting to know that person is fear. We see them walking past us every day. It could even be a friend of a close friend of ours, and yet we're afraid. Can't really tell what it is we fear, because each and everyone one of us has a world inside their head. Different reasons and opinions. But when we overcome that fear, we open up.

"Why do we do that?" I asked myself earlier today, "Why is it I have an easier time telling so much about me to a complete stranger, than to a long time friend?". And for that matter, why are strangers so interesting? What is it about the unknown that makes us so curious? We tend to believe that we're so excited and nervous to meet them because we don't know them. I beg to differ (I always do). I strongly believe it is on the contrary. We are so appealed towards getting to know strangers because THEY don't know US.

We can be whoever we want to be. To them, we are the person we've never had the courage to be before. A stranger doesn't know where you've been or who you know. He or she might know your name, but not your story. They might know what you've done, but not what you've seen, lived or been through. They are a blind jury standing in front of our past. Completely unable to judge us. Besides, if they dared judge us, strangers can't hurt or brake us. We feel absolutely no type of emotional attachment towards them and neither them for us. And if this were the case, they wouldn't try. They want to get to know us first...then they decide whether it's a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

And is meeting a stranger our "ticket out"? Or is it the "ticket in"? I mean, maybe by meeting random people we find out more about ourselves than we thought we did. Would you dare to say that in the process of introducing yourself to another person you haven't hesitated at least ONCE about things you were so clear about before? Maybe you were asked who your best friend is, and even after several years of friendship with the so called person, you still hesitate on your answer. That hesitation demonstrates change. Change is the part of nature we control, and the best thing about it is that it can start whenever we decide.

Example of a place where you don't try 
to be nice to strangers. 
Unless you want to get ear raped.

Maybe talking to strangers, as we've been taught since we were little, isn't so dangerous after all. (Yeah, this is guessing you're not going to try to talk to a man in a dark alley with a knife in his left hand or some stupid thing like that. I'm assuming you're smarter than to pull that one off). Perhaps it is a way to finally fulfill all those new wants and needs we've been building up during the time our old friends bailed on us and fed us to the wolves. (Who fucking needs them anyway?)


When a stranger smiles at you, smile back. A stranger is just a friend you have yet to meet, so take the risk. And maybe after you do, while then getting to know the unknown you can get to re-discover yourself.