Few things are sadder than parallel lines. Because parallel lines never touch. They can span the distance of eternity in both directions and race around the world twice, but they never touch. They may shoot from heaven to hell, but they never cross each other’s path. They can walk through life side-by-side, heart-breakingly close, near enough to feel the warmth of each other’s skin and breath and life, but they can never touch, because to touch would be the death of the parallel line.
Let’s make a pact, a promise to each other. Let’s search for the parallel lines in our lives, the things we refuse to touch because of fear or hurt or anger or prejudice. Let’s hunt and find and weed out the parallel lines in our lives. Let’s take our parallel lines and bend them, even if only by a single degree, towards each other. Let’s bend them so they touch. Let’s turn our lives into the messy canvas of a child’s sketchbook, where all the lines cross and intersect and touch each other, and the colors run off the page and stain the table. Yes, let us touch each other. Let’s touch it all. May our hands be smeared with the vibrant colors of the ink and paint and bloody lines in our lives, and may we grow sweaty and exhausted with the strain of turning those seemingly immovable lines towards each other. It’s not easy, but the beauty of these lines is that it only takes one degree. With the slightest twist, the briefest turn, the smallest change in course, the lines must eventually touch. They may not touch today, or tomorrow, or in seven miles, or three years, but one day, some mile, they will, and a single touch can make all the difference.
