The Table

Maybe some people just aren't supposed to have a circle. Maybe my purpose here isn't to love and be loved or to be known. Maybe my purpose here is to offer clarity. My presence never seems to be something that's kept around. My circle is always small and ever changing. Someone seeks out clarity when they need it but they rarely want it around. Perhaps my presence is a sort of necessary evil, like accountants and insurance agents. You need them to be there when you need them, but you don't really want them around either and you hate the premise of their jobs anyway.

I've often been sad over the idea that no one wants to stay at my table and the truth is - I've been misunderstanding the purpose of the table. I've been thinking it's a dinner table and the reality is that it's a conference table. People sit here to work out their business in a clean environment, where there's enough room given to work out the kinks and details and then they leave the table and go about their business elsewhere. They go home to their dinner tables with family and they are grateful for the clarity that my table has offered them. They are grateful for the space at my table because it is what allows them to save the space at their tables for what is important.

It is lonely to be at my conference table.

I feel a sense of purpose when someone is sitting at my table and I am helping them with their puzzle, but it is a certain kind of lonely to be left with my own puzzles, still in their boxes, waiting their turn to be unpacked.

This loneliness has brought pain with it. And as I have gotten older, the pains have gotten deeper. Or perhaps I just don't recover the way I did when I was young and invincible. It's painful to be a necessary evil or to be grateful for someone's mere presence at your table. And somehow I'm learning slowly, ever so slowly, to stop becoming attached to the people who sit at my table. They come to me for a service, not for company. As I settle in to this idea, that maybe some people just aren't supposed to have a circle, it feels a little less painful.

Someone said once that it is the kind of lonely that one can feel when waiting at a bus stop or a train station. There is a simple resignation and acceptance of the fact that I am alone. Here I am. Here I wait.

And the sun still shines. And the birds still sing. And the bus or train will arrive.