Observing from the sidelines

You know how people always encourage us to stay away from the sidelines and live life on the field? But what if it’s better for some people to live on the sidelines? What’s wrong with observing human behavior from afar without participating?
What if interacting with others not only minimizes how much you get hurt but how much you hurt others? What if you tried to navigate the field of human relationships and got nothing but pain in the end? What if you realize that even if you try to tread as lightly as a butterfly, there are mines that will have to go off? And mines are mines,figuratively speaking, nothing light about them…
What if there is a threshold to how much rejection you can accept? What if there is a limit to how many broken promises you can hear? That it doesn’t matter what our intentions are, irreparably damaging others is inevitable. Someone out there might be stronger because of something you did. But someone out there might be weaker because of something you did as well.
People want to leave a legacy, maybe as small as a vivid memory in the mind of another but what if that memory of you sears the other so it affects every decision they make for years and years and years, not necessarily in a good way. How do you even look at the mirror then? The problem is, some people do, and to them it’s business as usual. And while whatever they did seems to permeate every facet of your life (not necessary in a good way) they’re out there living their happy lives like you didn’t matter.
Because the truth is
you didn’t.
So here’s to the people on the sidelines, don’t feel bad about staying there. Sometimes it’s not a bad choice because people normally underestimate the (good or bad) affect they have on others.
And to the others, W.B. Yeats writes, “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

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