While doing some reading for my literature class, I came across a passage that really struck me. It is taken from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses":

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.

It reminded me of a quote that I heard once, I have no idea what it was or who it was by, but it had to do with our lives being like drops of water that slide down a window glass. Each bumps into another and slides down taking a part of the other drop. The gist being that we take something from every person and every experience that we have. Tennyson takes that further in that not only are our experiences part of us, but we are part of them and it is those experiences that make a door for us to step through for more...ever beyond reach...always an experience ready to be lived.

There are so many people that I have met that I will likely never meet again, and yet they had a profound impact on my life. It might be for best, memories are always more powerful than reality. Still, sometimes out of the blue something will trigger my memory...a song, the lines of a poem, a color even...and I suddenly have a deep longing to reconnect with someone. There is nothing in my life that I would change, no one I have known that I would "unknow"...they are all part of me and I can only hope that I have left something in them as well.