organising notes is studying because i am near my notes.

We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our
psychology, however frank and open our behavior, we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our
neighbors through Him.
... Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), The Cost of Discipleship [1964]

i rejected this utterly at first. how can you say that we are totally incapable of knowing and loving another person completely? but actually, yea its true. otherness and strangeness. even with people that i'd say im closest to, there's always something there, a trace of awkwardness or insecurity, something i dont know about them and the fact that i could never really know everything even if they wanted me to. like when you get to know a guy and in the beginning you think "wow! we're so alike! we're perfect for each other! no one knows me like him!" and you tell him everything, and you get close, but then you start noticing all the things that he could never understand about you, and if you're selfless enough, those you could never understand about him. and all those little things create a gulf, whether you like it or not, whether its someone you pass in the street, or someone you've been married to for fifty years, that's how it is. but i've never felt closer to someone than when i've sat down and prayed with them, or for them, even a stranger. for some unexplainable reason, when you pray you open up yourself in a way you never would otherwise, you kind of surrender self-consciousness and barricades, and i suppose that's when you can really be known, and know.

actually, i was going to do this for this entry, but i did it halfway and then came to a point that i found i didnt want people to know my answer to. sigh, how easily i edit things i dont want people to know out. i love these things though, the individual plagiarism of them, how everyone copies the same set of statements but melds their life into them with a yes or no. i suppose the questions i dont answer are the ones that highlight events i wish i could go back and change, but this is how it is. sigh, these are the things we should be able to paint.