Mosaic Hearts

There have been plenty of criticisms to the classic, and sometimes cliche-feeling, phrase “you’re the combination of the five people you spend the most time with.” There exists this notion that we are inherently made up of those that we keep close. Those little fragments of who they are, in turn, make up who we are. 

I like to think of it as a mosaic. I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York several years ago, and my favorite section was the American Wing. This grand room had a gridded ceiling made of glass, and in the summertime, the light sneaks in, in just the right ways to illuminate the artwork. There is a piece called Garden Landscape here, by Louis Tiffany, that, during these lazy summer afternoons, is electrified by the sun that oozes in. Garden Landscape is a mosaic, and one of the closest pieces there to my heart. From a distance, it looks fluid and whole. However, if you take the time to examine it any closer, the entire piece is made up of tiny chips of glass. Glittering pinks and blues and greens, fitting seamlessly together to construct the larger picture. 

I think people are like this too. From afar, we each go about our daily lives as independent individuals. However, if you look closer, get more intimate, you’ll find that we each are culminations of those external figures who have passed by and moved us in some way. Sometimes, existing as these iridescent mosaics can feel heavy, and we feel like we can never let these pieces go, or put them down to relieve us of the weight. We carry the rest of our worlds with us, always. 

If you’re any of my close family or friends, you know I don’t ever get over anything. Literally ever. I am definitely the most sentimental person I know. I’m still thinking of better comebacks from arguments that dissipated three years ago. I still won’t let my sister play that one song in the car. I still hold onto the stuffed animals my old best friend gave me on valentine’s day in the seventh grade. I keep every note or letter anyone has ever given me in a scrapbook under my desk. Every place I drive by in my hometown, every desperate journal page, every musician or book series. For me, they all have people attached to them. You get the picture. It goes on forever. I am me, but I am also everyone I have ever loved. Little fragments of our souls attach to the people who love us. Each of us is our own Garden Landscape, constantly expanding in color, constantly collecting memories. 

In some ways, this idea is very pure and deserves some adoration. Recognizing how those who we have loved, or those who have been kind and maybe just passed by, can become pieces of us is wholesome. I have a niche affinity for punk rock music because of a public speaker I worked with in a leadership class, as he was in his own badass garage band. I know way too much about nice cars because I know a girl who knows everything about every European luxury brand you could name. I listen to way too many true crime podcasts because my best friend put me on her favorites. Every time Netflix drops a new unsolved case documentary, I think of her immediately. The list could go on for pages. There is something so sweet about the surface level of some of these little soul-pieces. We are all made up of other people, in really beautiful and connecting ways. These things stick, because at one place and time, they mattered to us, and those who we gained them from mattered to us as well. My favorite is from when I was fifteen, and in my sophomore year of high school. A redheaded boy with a soft smile and warm eyes held the entry door to school open every single day. He was always there early. Even if it was pouring rain, or snowing, or 25 degrees, or pitch-black, nobody ever got into the building without a good morning. I am attached to this act of kindness he showed to me and to everyone, and he never expected anything in return. It isn’t often you meet someone with such a pure heart. I try and replicate this often. Even the most generic act of holding open a door for a stranger pulls on the heartstring that reminds me of another person. 

But, as yin is to yang, this ideology is not without heavy weight. Sometimes, we realize there are pieces to our mosaics we wish we could rid ourselves of. It is often that the pieces that make us up are leftovers of hurt. While one glass piece reminds us of a kind hand from an old friend, another may strike a chord with a time, or a person we wish we could forget. Moving on from loss, from heartbreak, can feel impossible when you look in the mirror and see pieces of them looking back in the glass. I myself have wanted nothing more than to change myself so completely that I no longer recognized the person who succumbed to the same kind of heartbreak. I have all these pieces to me that I have collected from those who are no longer present, and the fear of having to bear that for all eternity is quite overwhelming. It prompts the wrenching thought of “god, I see you everywhere I look.” I know I will never be able to listen to the orchestral chords at the end of one-too-many ballads without the attached memory, without a you on the other end of the neural pathway. Going through a heartbreak, or a loss like this, is so exhausting because you must somehow learn to live with all of the things you associated with this person. I’ve had the most beautiful sunset spot in my town, the entire month of August, and the best The 1975 songs ruined for me. Part of having a mosaiced heart is terrifying. You can't hide things from yourself. You can't pretend to look at yourself and the world through a lens untouched by the people you've loved, no matter how much you wish you could revert to some unattainable universe where you never knew them. I didn’t want to end up not being able to drive around my hometown without whipping my head in the direction of any faded tan SUV that passed by me. 

Wearing this kind of mosaic on your sleeve can hurt the most when it manifests with death. When you lose someone, and the pieces they leave behind are all you have left, you find yourself struggling to keep your head above water. The glass shards you’ve quickly and desperately collected nip at your ankles, pulling you further under. When someone leaves this earthly plane for the next, it is human custom to hold onto it all. You cannot sleep unless it is in their old basketball jersey. Every December you unfold their crinkled, flour-weathered cookie recipe (because it hasn’t really felt like Christmas since, and you think this is the closest you might get). You don’t let go of anything. Of course, you keep the photos and the jewelry like any sane person. But their old bedroom isn’t the only thing tainted. When we lose someone, we so quickly gain so many more chips of glass in the mosaic. When someone leaves us, we don’t put down anything that might remind us of a time before. However, it is possible to allow these traces of those who have passed to serve as positive reminders and preservers of memory. It is exactly this. This accumulation of mosaic pieces, that allows us to carry on the legacy of someone else. It may hurt, but it has the capacity to serve love. 

All of this said, the way we grow is through these experiences, and through the bits and pieces of others that become bits and pieces of ourselves. Holding onto things that hurt, and not being able to put them down, is part of the human condition. It is this sensitivity, and this care for our peers, that allows us to connect on this deep of a plane to begin with. It is through this notion that we learn, that we remember, and that we are able to propel ourselves forward.