That Which is Good

One time in 11th grade, I think it was, I wrote this paper.  What it was about I don't remember, but what I do recall is that the teacher made this comment in the margin that the comparison I'd made between the book in the report to another book I'd read had nothing to do with the report. 
She claimed my comparison was moot, irrelevant, a poor use of comparison.
Obviously it must have struck a chord in me if I remember it twelve years later. 

I want to understand things so much that I usually end up over analyzing them to death.  I'm so introspective that sometimes I'm afraid my inner monologue will fall out of my mouth and everyone will discover that I have extensive, thoughtful conversations with myself.
Maybe I was always meant to be a writer.
I certainly am always thinking a running narrative of all that is going on around me, all I'm being told and all that's being whispered about me.
I take it all in.
And I always have an opinion about it.

I had this thought that I don't think I'm capable of viewing someone with completely new eyes because everything I know, everything I've learned, is comparative.
That prince was not like this prince who wasn't like that one prince but kind of looks like that guy from the bar I was at last night.  And they say we are to love each time as if it was our first but how is that even possible when my eyes are jaded by all I've already seen, all I know, all that has yet to be?

I learn comparatively.  We all do, I guess.  We know black is black and not grey because we know what each is and each isn't.  But I feel like I have an especially heightened comparative learning process.
I'm not really sure what that means but I remember a lot.
And I notice a lot.
I'd make a really keen spy.

I asked this girl at my work what her tattoo said and it read
Hold fast to that which is good.
Coincidentally enough, I found myself reading in Romans the next day and there in chapter twelve, verse nine, I read
Let your love be sincere; hate what is evil, but hold fast to that which is good.
And I had to smile over such happenstance.  And I wondered if the girl knew what was written on her was also written there or if it was just some phrase she liked. 
But the repetition of the words lingered with me.
Hold fast.

Last week I was at a wine bar downtown and noticed a girl I'd gone to school with a lifetime ago and wondered if she knew who I was but thought little of it.
The next day I was at the duck park and that same girl was jogging there too, in the opposite direction to the way I was walking. 
I wondered again if she knew who I was or even that we'd been at the same bar the night before.  I wondered if she'd noticed, like I had, that our paths were acutely aligned.
And over analyzer that I am, I wondered what it could even mean. 
If anything.

I guess that's just it.  Sometimes things don't mean what they seem to, sometimes they just are what they are.  Sometimes there's so much more to them than you'll ever realize.
And sometimes all you know to be true is actually what's really there.
And very few ever see that, very few share such secrets.
But those who do, see.
And know.
They know all that is never spoken, all that few ever see.

If God is good and God is the Spirit
and the Spirit lives in me
then I am good, through Him, by Him,
I am good
And I hold fast to that which is good
I hold fast to me
If I fall, if I slip,
 if I can't be all that I could be
I hold fast