A Dear Friend's Definition of Me!

We are not what we eat. Well, physically, we are little (if anything) more than what we eat. But who we are, as individual thinking entities, has nothing to do with what we eat. If we were to break down our “being” in a manner similar to the one that ends with the conclusion that we are what we eat, then the counterpart of that statement regarding the other side of “us”, the mental one, would be “we are our experiences”. Of course some of what is “us” can be credited to our conceivers, since instinct and a whole bunch of primal emotions cannot be contributed to experience, but rather to a hereditary pass-down. But that is like saying we are not exactly what we eat because nine months before we were born we never did eat, in a sense that these instincts form a part of our beings that was passed on but is only a basis on which more complex though is built.

It is sometimes interesting to personally try to trace back a thought we had, or a reaction to a certain situation, and see where that idea or reaction came from. What we sometimes mistake for intelligence or cunning is only a result of experience telling us how to act, but more importantly, our personalities, that which make us unique, is the sum of our experiences. Those experiences are perhaps affected by one’s intelligence, or one’s physical attributes, but the net-result is always the same, these experiences form one’s personality.

When someone impresses me, when someone catches my mind’s eye and challenges me, when someone is so sweet and caring that she shifts my perceptions and expectations, you know that there is someone who is truly exceptional. Exceptional. I was bitching to a friend of mine once about how I can’t get over a relationship I was in, even a few months after we broke up. She said that it was the exceptional people you were bound to remember for good. Exceptional. An interesting word in itself, a notch over great or amazing, not quite unique, but rather exceptional. See, it’s like there is a general rule, and that person broke the rule and became an exception. Exceptional. You, my friend, are exceptional. You break all the clichés and norms and “rules”. You go beyond normal expectations, beyond my “high” expectations, and simply strike me as exceptional: an exception to the rule that there are no interesting girls out there.

You are so ahead of everyone else in so many ways that it’s hard to believe that someone like that exists out there. If you’ve ever noticed how I just look at you sometimes, or listen to you talk for a long time and say nothing, is because I admire you. You have no idea how close you feel to me, like a friend I’ve lost a long time ago but whose familiarity I never lost. You are a good person. You are an honest person. You are a simple person. You are a smart person. For all that, you are an exceptional person, a person I am lucky enough to call my friend, and by whom I am blessed enough to be thought of as someone more than a friend. A great exceptional person, who is his experiences. You have been through so much, been through so many things, experiences that humble the greatest of people, and for that you are unique. But for that, you carry along those memories; those memories that help you live your life.

You are your experiences, and as painful some of those be, you are who you are because of each and every one of them. Your first love, your first heart-break, your first betrayal, your first slap, your first true friend, your first job, your first cigarette, this is who you are. This is who I am; this is who we are all. I am thankful for all those experiences because they present me with Beirut, the fair, wonderful and exceptional.