Greatest Hits

I was sitting with a close friend the other day and he was saying something I had heard him say before; many times before. It’s an essential part of his story or at least essential to him. Was he about to stumble onto some new insight or was he simply reminding himself of who he is, and what had happened—repeating the tale to reinforce his essential himness? Truth is, it didn’t matter. My job was to just sit there and listen. To bear witness and receive. Listening is an act of humility, but listening to something you’ve heard many times before is an act of friendship. I used to get impatient when friends repeated themselves, wanting to scream “Jesus Christ, I’ve heard this shit a million times, haven’t you got anything new?!” But now I realize new is overrated. That we repeat ourselves because the stories are still vivid and alive. The same way we return to cherished books or play our favorite records, these tales soothe and reassure us-- or ruffle us when ruffling is what we need.

Our familiarity with another’s “story” is a marker of how close we are to them. The people we have heard repeat themselves over and over are usually the most important people in our lives, as are the people we repeat our stories to. Some of these nuggets are memories and anecdotes, funny things that happened to us on our way to the forum. But a lot of times the stories we retell are full of grief and confusion. Childhood memories. Patterns in relationships. Struggles to make sense of whatever the hell happened, and if we’re not careful (and sometimes even if we are) keep on happening.

As I get older, the people I know get older, and I have known many of them for a very long time. That being said, some of my closest friendships were forged in the past decade, a couple of these friends are well over eighty now, and though they seek to stay open and evolve they are pretty set in their ways. They ARE who they are and I like who they are, and because I like who they are I don’t mind when they repeat themselves. Maybe our tolerance for another’s repetition is a good litmus test of how we feel about them?

What am I trying to say?

I think I’m trying to say that life is poetry and that we all have our essential refrains. That when we hear another repeat themselves (especially another we care for) it isn’t that they are unimaginative at best or on their way to Alzheimer’s at worst, it is that they are letting us know what matters most to them. They are playing us their greatest hits, and if we are a true fan of their music, then we tap our foot and snap our fingers no matter how many times we’ve heard the song.