People came as they were, or as they wanted to be.
They thought, I am driven.
They thought, is this longing?
They thought, but this is fear. This is anger.
They sang the song called “What is love?”
They said drive, they said longing.
They said, as a matter of fact.
That could be enough of what they said.
Many were quite willing to look at people
just the way they hoped to be perceived,
at least in the beginning. Others, of course, were surveyors,
little Freuds and Jungs and Mortimer Adlers.
There were also times
we would look at others through the lens of our own hopes,
as though just their appearance was all the answer we really needed.