Seeing isn't believing...or is it?

I'm not sure where I'm headed with this thought process. I know what I want to say, I think. Trying to get it out in words that make sense outside of my head, might be the difficult part.

It's fairly common knowledge that people see what they want to see and don't often admit that what they're seeing isn't what they want, or isn't healthy to them, until they have absolutely no option but to admit it.

Hope is a powerful force. The smallest amount can be the biggest influence in a situation. A sliver of light that can shine so bright, that the ugliness of all that surrounds it can't be seen. It can make a person lost in the jungle hold on that extra day till they're rescued. It can make a cheater's partner stay, because he said he'd change.

But what is it that makes that light fade? Does the situation have to repeat itself just one last time? Does the person resign themselves to the situation, because they lose the energy to fight it? Or do they finally see that the hope is the strength inside of them, and that the light they thought was hope, was the situation reflecting that strength within...showing it to them... all along?

I think that until a person realises that the light of hope outside of them, therefore unable to be controlled by them, is really the strength within themselves, and that they hold the power over the situation, they'll remain.

I've done it. Everyone's done it, in one way or another. It's hard to watch someone doing it. Especially when you've done it yourself and you know how the story ends.

Along similar lines, but unrelated to all the above, is peoples' interpretations of what they see, hear and read. I saw an interview with J@mes B!lunt a couple of weeks ago. The interviewer was asking him about his song, G0odbye My L0ver, and queried which partner had left. He said that's the idea. It could be either one. People put their own take on lyrics and relate to them in their own ways. By not spelling out who actually left whom, he's able to have people hear it from whatever position they're in at that time. Smart, if you ask me, when it's your business to make people feel.

T wrote me a concerned email not long ago. I'd written some poetry a while back that he'd only just read. One was simply a thought process I'd had, that literally took me a few minutes to put down in poem form. The other was a combination of a few different peoples' issues and my thoughts on what their thoughts might have been. However, T thought I had been writing about him and he was worried that I had concerns I was keeping from him.

After I assured him there was nothing for him to worry about, and that other people had related to what I'd written, I was pleased...on a level. I'd achieved what I set out to do when I write...to make different people feel like the words were about them, or for them.

It's not something that can be forced, because contrived words rarely reach deep inside a person, or if they do, they don't stay there long. I don't write for anyone. I write spontaneously, impulsively. I find it difficult to write on demand about a specific topic. I've learnt the hard way to carry a notebook with me wherever I go, because if I don't put a thought down as soon as I can, I won't get it back in the same way some time later.

T said it's, "...as if there is a part of you that I don't get to see that might have a different take on things. Almost like there are two of you." I understand that, because sometimes I don't feel like me when I write. I don't know where it comes from. I don't think there are two of me, but some things definitely come from a different part of me that is separate from the 'me' I show the world.

But if people can feel and relate to what comes from there, then I know that what I'm doing is right, and it's what I'm supposed to do. I don't think you can get much better than that.