If you look closely, you start to see the many gaps in life.

The obvious gap that keeps the timid at a safe distance...

The wide gaps that span across cultures and times.

The wider gap that still widens with a sudden turn of attention...

and the widest gap between strangers that only a child can bear staring into.

These gaps are the manifestations of the psychological distance that we all maintain... and depend on.

They fill the empty spaces, however large or small they may be.

They separate individuals, and groups of individuals...

We take care to maintain these gaps where-ever and whenever possible.

And learn to ignore it even when it finally becomes uncomfortably difficult.

But sometimes we sense and keep a distance even from those whom we love.

The closeness that remains is only matched by the subtle distance that grows between the father and the son.

We observe the gaps that form and close between the past, the present, and the future generations.

We detect the unspoken and untouchable gap that forces itself into a relationship.

We treasure the gap that reflects the freedom of preferences.

And live with the gap that becomes a necessity with age.

There are, of course, also gaps within ourselves that we encounter throughout our lives.

The small distance at which the world had seemed safely irrelevant in our early years...

...is the same gap that we must leap across to embrace the true elements of the world. 

We become familiar with the gap between being here and wishing to be there.

And the gap between the granting of one small wish and another. 

The gap between the heart and the head.

And the gap between the calmness that has come with age, and vague memories of old passions. 

These gaps, then, reveal that ultimate gap:

The one between who we think or wish we were...

...and who we, perhaps(?), really are. 

The gap between being, and becoming.

04.Jan.2018, London.