The past two days, I’ve been digging the Smashing Pumpkins.  This really doesn’t make sense to me.  I like them just fine and have some of their old stuff, but it’s never been ‘go to’ music for me in any way.

Then yesterday while I was running, this lyric from “Tonight, Tonight” jumped up and hit me in the gut:

And you know you’re never sure
But you’re sure you could be right
If you held yourself up to the light.

I just love that.   It resonated with me, I think, because of an image that popped into my head recently while talking with a friend:  that each of us is basically a shell game.

We meet people throughout stages of our lives, we form relationships…people drift in and out and really only know a portion of us, or what we allow them to see. 

A constant shuffle, reminiscent of the law school “hide the ball” analogy…letting certain aspects of ourselves show, and cautiously guarding others.  Do we ever really lift up all the shells at once?

This seemed profound and deep at the time.  In print it seems more akin to late-night college drunk talk.  Twenty years too late, and I’m not drunk, but I still like it.