my task is to create a profile for myself or rather of myself, not a visual one but a written one.  Either task to me is equally daunting.  I think I would prefer the artist’s challenge of capturing myself on canvas, although, how do they do that? There have been some self portraits by famous artists over the years, but this is to be a profile, which is different than a portrait.  Different how? you ask.  Well, a profile is a side view, a silhouette, an outline, a sketch.  It lacks the depth and dimension that a portrait would provide about its’ subject.

But you see, dear readers, I have entered the world of online dating and I am required to create a profile to post with my picture and my other information, my stats if you will.  (and I thought only athletes had stats?)  Something in me is pushing back at this routine request, actually outright rebelling would be closer to the truth.  You see, I think we are more than our resumes!

In attempting to put my life on paper, something is lost in the process.  The very words I pen in an attempt to define me, instead confine me, putting limits on who I am, as I feel compelled to stay within the lines I have drawn for myself or worse yet, to stay within the lines that others have drawn for me.  We are each so much more than simply the sum of our cumulative life experiences.  Our whole is always greater than the sum of our many parts or facets.  We are not a mathematics equation; we do not equal the sum of all our parts, we far exceed it.  This is true for each and every one of us.

We are more than a list of our likes and our dislikes.  We are more than a list of our accomplishments.  We are more than the list of our failures and our struggles as well.  (but who will include these in the profile they create?)  And so it will happen that strangers will read my words.  But will they read between the lines? Will they know the truths that lie behind the words?  Will they hear what is left unsaid?  Will they hear my heart?

We each have a story to tell.  Actually, we accumulate many stories over our life time. We weave them together into the fabric that we wear as we go through life. This fabric with which we clothe ourselves becomes our life story.  We are so much more than meets the eye.  We are more than a profile.  We are each a full-fledged portrait, meant to be beheld in person.

And that is where cyberspace falls short.  I want an in person relationship in the real world, not a cyber relationship in the on-line world.  Could the former result from the latter?  Time will tell.  Given all the problems technology and I have in getting along, it will take a miracle to make a real world connection.  I’m hanging on to my mustard seed even as I write these words.  My God says a mustard seed is all that is necessary.

Bottom line, I don’t want to know someone’s profile, I want to know them.  And I want someone to know me.

“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”  (1Corinthians 13:12)

sincerely,    Grace Day