Strangers in the Night

The inspiration for this piece comes from the author’s takeaways from the latest Spiderman movie and a friend’s recent experiences.

Why am I writing this? Well, I don’t know. Will I look back at this a couple years down the line and die of cringe? Yes. Will that stop me from writing this anyway? Absolutely not.

So as Coldplay’s “A Rush of Blood to the Head” delivers a, well, rush of blood to my head, here goes future regret.

Love is just a glance away,

A warm embracing dance away.

sings Frank Sinatra in his song, “Strangers in the Night”. It’s a beautiful song about how two strangers exchange glances and end up spending their lives together. Not that I can relate to any of it, but yeah, beautiful song nonetheless.

As one enters this college, more often than not, they are in the process of making the leap from their teenage years to adulthood. This process brings with it a lot of chemical reactions; some good, some bad, but almost all of them lead to you making bad decisions. After all, it is the head that is supposed to do the thinking, and not the heart. Let’s just say, writing this was one such decision. But anyways, I digress. 

So yes, we have all heard the phrase “beauty lies in the eye of the beholder”, but we don’t really realise the true meaning of it until you see that one person. That person with whom you lock eyes for the first time and you instantly know, without even knowing that person, without having ever talked to that person, you just know. Like I said, chemical reactions. At this point, though, we reach a crossroad: the confident, or should I say daring, few go right up and interact with that person, but it is not this type of person whose experiences this article is about, because, well, in the words of Sir Isaac Newton, “A blind man is no judge of colours”. 

It is the other type of person whose story is more interesting: the person that avoids eye contact with people, the person who can’t seem to make conversation even when they’re presented with an opportunity to do so. The person for whom talking to someone of the opposite gender is a foreign concept, and going out with them is a yet-to-be-discovered one. The person who spends their days thinking, “What if the feelings aren’t reciprocated on the other side?” The person who can only muster up the courage to say an awkward “Hi” or a “What’s up?” which is more often than not replied to with a head nod. The person who believes that liking the other person’s stories on Instagram is a far safer way to express their appreciation instead of actually talking to them. It’s like Peter going to MJ’s housewarming party but never really telling her what he intended to tell her. 

The author finds this type of person interesting because there is no one in this world that this person could share their struggles with, and yet, that person wakes up every day with a boatload of emotional baggage on their mind, sees the other person going on about their life everyday, and still decides to remain completely professional, not letting anyone else even get a hint of what’s really going on in their mind. Truly amazing. But at the same time, kinda sad.

It’s at this moment that the author is reminded of the last few lines of the song “RIP Luv”. As Morgan Freeman puts it,

Truly genuine love never really dies

But lust, infatuation, and unrevealed attraction

Are all things that over time rarely survive.

So if your affection for someone truly survives the test of time, then you my friend have stumbled upon what they call True **** (The forbidden four-letter word).