A Moment from Tacoma

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Odin: So you do not know what you’re looking for?

Sareh: No, I just imagine…well I guess I just mean, someone I can talk to. Someone who makes me laugh. Don’t you like some people more than others?

Odin: I suppose there are some people that engage more freely with me, and I do prefer it.

Sareh: See? You too! You want someone who opens up to you. Who lets you in. You’re trying to get to know people, right? I think that’s what everybody wants.

Odin: I wonder why some people are more open to such exchanges than others.

Sareh: I think some people are just raised to be less guarded. Or to trust people more.

Sareh’s still looking for something. That’s why I like her. Personally I think it’s more complicated than Sareh lets on: it’s not just about how we’re raised. Some of us learn to be guarded, to be wary. Life teaches some of us to be very slow to trust, very cautious about opening up. Life reminds some of us constantly that we should be on the defensive. We all want someone who opens up to us, who lets us in, but some of us can only open up to very rare, special people. Some of us are like computers that only a few people have the passwords to; we’re closed off to everyone else but yearning to open up and be known by someone who, just by virtue of being who they are, can bypass our security systems. We keep looking and looking for someone we can both open up to and who wants to open up to us. It’s not easy for some of us. But if, along the way, we find someone like Odin who we can talk to honestly about the search, well, I suppose that’s something. 

Tacoma looks on all its characters with such compassion that I thought I heard it saying: Lucky are those who have already found each other. Blessed are those who are still looking.

Read my review of Tacoma for Feminist Frequency.