Jaime Mascarenhas

UX/UI + Web Design + Digital Marketing + Writing

Author: Jaime Mascarenhas

  • People come and go

    It’s true people come and go. Common, normal people. People like you and me.

    I bet you’ve already realized this. What I’m really not sure is if you’ve given a thought to the fact that perhaps you’re the one who walked away from them. There was nothing wrong, you think, but there was also nothing right. There was nothing at all. No love, no hard feelings, no trust, no empathy. Nothing. Nothing that would make you go away. Nothing that would keep you there anyway.

    There was no thrill, no meaning in that connection. It just didn’t make sense for it gave you nothing and you had nothing to add up to it. So you preferred to ignore that last invitation for dinner and stayed home playing video games. And then you never called back. But they did, didn’t they? They invited you for a hike. Then for a party. For breakfast. For lunch. Drinks? Dinner? Hi?

    We usually think about the ones we miss yet we don’t really remember the ones who miss us. If I were to guess, I’d say it is because we don’t miss them as much. 

    We perceive our connections the way our heart commands us to. We value some connections more than others the same way we are valued more or less by those same connections of ours. Pretty much the same way we consider there is a connection where there was never any connection at all. Works both ways. The truth is some people weren’t even there-there. Just as you weren’t there for someone who needed you to be.

    People are like asteroids entering a planet’s orbit. They come in quickly, join the flow, clash and crash. They never crash alone though. They shatter in pieces and hit all other asteroids on their way affecting their trajectories irreversibly.

    A long time ago one of those collisions changed my life. It has now made me think about how people come and go and it made me realize how many times I’ve let go of those who needed me the most. 

    Like I said, people come and go after they serve a purpose in our life. Usually it’s giving us some sort of lesson that we’ll understand later in time rather than something pragmatic and immediate. And this is why we remember and regret and also why we forgive and forget.

    So I dare you:

    Make that phone call you’ve been postponing for so long you’re even ashamed of trying. And to you on the other side, pick the phone up. After all, you do it all the time, don’t you? I mean it. Stop what you’re doing and call one of those people you miss. They’re living a distant life but so are you.

  • Narcissism

    Picture of a flower

    In the end, it’s only by looking at ourselves that we understand the true meaning of things. At least of our own distorted way of seeing reality. It’s only by looking at the mirror that we face our own narcissism.

    We put ourselves on a pedestal for a minute there. We observe our favorite traits and notice our negative ones. We choose to live with them or do something about it. We resign to the fact that some things can’t be changed and it makes them worse than ever before. We forget all we learned from the best we had only to get an inflated, distorted idea of our importance in the world. As if we mattered any more than they do.

    For a minute there it’s only you. You, you, you, you, you.

    You forget the piece of s— you actually are and think of changing, improving, doing better. You make plans for yourself and forget the importance of all the others in your life. You only use them as you need them and discard them when you’re done. Yet you don’t realize life takes as much as it gives if you don’t give back.

    When it all falls, you blame your grandparents, your parents, your siblings, your peers. But ultimately it all depends on you. It all depends on how you see the world. It all depends on your efforts for being kind and showing some empathy to the others close to you.

    In that sense, a friend used to say that people are like plants. They rejoice when you water them but they also feel when you don’t. And eventually, if you forget to water them one day too many, they dry. They die. First on the inside. Then on the outside.

    So you look back in time. You remember how tiny that plant was when you first got it, how beautiful it turned out to be and, perhaps, how important it was – now that it’s gone.

    You grab it and throw it away. There’s nothing you can do about it anymore.

    You notice the mirror on the way, stop, look at it. You notice your eyes shine a little less today, and that doesn’t make you feel comfortable. So you practice a fake new smile until it becomes real. The mirror looks back at you. You can tell the difference in your smile yet you decide to ignore it and move on.

    You killed a tree. So what? This story was never about that tree anyway.