Familiarity

Familiarity....

"Familiarity can breed contempt, familiarity can be comforting...."..another line I can add to my writing "Ever thought"

Familiarity of someone's voice..can be very comforting..can give a feeling of "coming home".

Familiarity of the lanes of your hometown, of the people, of the school building, can be very comforting as well. And I am not talking about nostalgia here. I am talking about that feeling of "belongingness". I am talking about that feeling you want to come home to...

Like my Dad was so in love with our 2 door herald car. It was not that it was the greatest car then. But it was "his" car. He new that car, the car responded to him. He could communicate with the car. Though for very long it gave us a lot of trouble, he never really wanted to sell it. Eventually we did sell it and bought a new generation car, but it was never tha same for him again. THe new car was just another car. There was no relation there, there was no familiarity.

Sometimes, I find my self knowingly instigating my mom to hear her scoldings....the same scoldings that I once found very irritating. I do this cos somewhere , it makes me feel good..the familiarity of her scoldings....makes me feel "at home".
In this world, where everything is changing so fast and so much, a bit of familiarity can be very comforting, and re-assuring.

There may come a stage in a relationship, when the voice of the other person...even when he/she is saying things that you may not want to hear...is comforting. You may not be interested in the content of the talks, but may want to just go on hearing him/her talk..cos its comforting, it is reassuring.

WE crave for that familiarity. And when you start to crave for that familiarity of someone or something..you know it is special.

But there are also times, when this familiarity breeds contempt.
When a relationship starts to feel like a drag...like a routine, too familiar perhaps....when you stop looking forward to things, when you start finding faults..when you start to find reasons to avoid.....all is not fine. THis is maybe a case of familiarity breeding contempt.

Why in some relationships, familiarity is comforting and in some it is not? I dont know.

So, we crave for that familiarity, for the feeling of "coming home to"...and at the same time...we crave for "new",for "different", for the "unfamiliar". And when we do experience that "unfamiliar"..it is thrilling at times, it feels different and it may feel good...it may also be otherwise at times...it can be scary too :-) . I guess somewhere that child within us wants to experince new thimgs, to explore while he knows that his mom is watching over him. THe child that wanders away from mom....and keeps looking back at her...to make sure she is watching him..and he keeps exploring. In his explorations, if he hurts himself...he comes running back into the arms of his mom. Maybe, we adults too want to keep exploring, keep experiencing something different, something new, while keep coming back to what is familiar and what is comforting. In the process maybe we create many more such "familiar grounds", such "comfort zones"...

So our ship needs those deep anchors to sail great distances...to explore new lands. Some relationships or places or thoughts or anything for that matter, may become those anchors. While some may add to the list of "different experiences"..that one may cherish or regret.