I glance over the coffee stained smiles, looking for me. I need associations and connections but find only familiarness and loose fitting comfort. Am I any closer to them than those people in the distance? Does it matter?

I'll find myself at that other table someday. I'll go through the same internal dialogue. Sussing them out, trying to find something to bring me closer or push me away.

It's easier dealing with people who lack polished social graces, or have chosen to cast them aside. Their words and expressions are pure. There's less work in figuring them out. No need to hammer and peel away a thick layer of imposed personalities to get at what's really down below.

We assume it's darker under there. After your first date with that great new guy you never wonder whether he's actually nicer than he seems. Instead, you worry about his darker underbelly. Was he faithful to his previous girlfriend?

We defend by looking for the worst in what we don't know. We do the dance, guys giving roses and asking concerned questions. Women playing the wholesome girl. We expose a fictional layer underneath. "He's not like that when he's alone with me. He's really sort of sweet."

The dirt of all these layers only conceals, peeling them away takes love. I'm not happy I just wrote that but what else do you call it? We spend our lives discovering ourselves through other people. Friendships and relationships come and go. A failed relationship is always a success because through it we know ourselves better and that's the real work. It's selfish work but it has to be. There's only one person capable of doing the beautifully dirty work that it is.

I've had friends that I've discovered to be immoral, some bordering on evil. I've also had friends that were complete pushovers. People walked all over them while they made excuses for them. What they share is that they helped make me who I am. It's how we grow and it can't be shortcut. Our internet friends and pen pals can't help us. I need to see you cheat your best friend. I have to help you pick up flowers for your girlfriend that I know is sleeping with two of our friends.

The coffee shop I'm sitting in takes deep breaths of the chunky brown city air as patrons push it's doors open on their way in or out. I can't know what each of them has to offer me. I don't know what that old man reading the paper with that open sore on his chin could teach me about me. I should really talk to him.

Getting to know myself demands that I stop filtering my contact with people. Stop avoiding conversations because I can't find a common thread, a language to talk, a lover to share. Those people I assume are outside my world have the most to teach me. Their lessons are completely new ones. I've never heard someone say what they will say to me. They're not expanding my world, they're helping me focus it.