There are few things more powerful than human touch.

In the world we live in today, we are kind of desensitized to one another. Flesh is everywhere, and sex is everywhere, and mothers don't hold their children, and how many people really recognize what just a simple touch means? Or maybe they realize its power, but only in the wrong ways. Not wrong--maybe just different.

Honestly, though--that actual physical connection between one human and another (and maybe another and another) means so much. That feeling of being just close to someone, even if only for a second--maybe you walk past someone on the street and you bump shoulders, and in that moment there's a little spot of lightning. Or maybe it's someone you're close to for a long time--maybe you fall asleep with somebody's arms around you, and the whole time you can feel your skin prickling, like electricity. Imagine that--imagine if there really were sparks you could see from outer space, wherever there was that electric touch, and they'd be out there in the space shuttle and see the whole world lighting up all over.

It is rare to find something more comforting, more comfortable than human touch--finding some way where you and somebody else fit perfectly into one another, like you're pieces of a jigsaw puzzle: how your chin fits on someone's shoulder, how someone's arm fits around your waist. I wonder: if everybody could find the way their bones locked into somebody else's, and it would be like a (how many people did I say there were on earth? Six billion-ish?) six billion-ish piece jigsaw puzzle. I wonder what kind of mosaic that would look like--I wonder if we really all do snap together, so perfectly, so easily. I think we should try it sometime.

"What's in a name?"

"That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet."

Someone just told me that it was strange to hear me say their name. And I thought about it, and really I feel strange whenever someone uses my name. I answer to it, of course, but somehow I don't consider my name a part of me. It's not as though it's a terribly unfit name; it's not a name I especially dislike--I just don't identify myself by my name. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with me as a person--it's just what I am called.

There have been studies showing that a person's name has a significant effect on their personality. I assume this has mostly to do with mispronunciations of the name, misspellings, nicknames, etc. Except I wonder how deep the effect is--as far as I can tell, my name hasn't shaped me very much. But perhaps it has, beyond what I consciously acknowledge. I've tried to think of ways my name is me--connections between myself and what I am called.

My first name, Mary, means "sea of bitterness." I don't think of myself as an especially bitter person, but perhaps I am, deep down. My middle name, Hannah, means "grace." I'd like to think I have an amount of grace, but I suppose there is a lot of evidence to the contrary.

As far as other aspects of the name go:

I have a somewhat cumbersome last name, one that is usually confusing both to say and spell. I can't think of how this may have affected me, but maybe it has. I go by my middle name rather than my first name, which has also proved a bit of a burden. I endured years of--well, I am still enduring, actually--plenty of "Hannah Banana" comments, and now that there's some T.V. show called Hannah Montana, I get that, too. Of course, a person gets tired of laughing politely each time she is placed alongside a fruit (for some reason, people seem to think it's an original joke, one no one has ever said before), but I can't think of any truly distinct effect this has had on me as a person.

Sometimes, though, people's names fit them perfectly. And you wonder if that's just by chance--just a good choice on the parents' part--or whether that person is who they are because of the name. (Which came first, the chicken or the egg?)

One of my very favorite books--it's not about names, but it has to do with them--is Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. In it, the title character--yes, her name is Stargirl--changes her own name periodically. Her original name is Susan, and over the course of her life she changes from that to Mudpie, to Pocket Mouse, to Stargirl (maybe there are a couple more in there I forgot). She says that her name is like a shirt, and when it doesn't fit her anymore, or it gets worn out, she throws it away and gets a new one. I think that's a sensible philosophy on names--your name is, essentially, what defines you in the world; shouldn't you be able to pick it out? Of course, it could get confusing with everyone changing their names all over the place, but really, it makes sense.

I wonder, though--would it really make a difference if people named themselves? I doubt that I would feel my name was any more a part of me if I chose it. That's simply because I think of myself as more than a name; a name is external (for its general purposes), and being inside myself, I imagine myself as so much more than a combination of six letters. Or four letters, or ten, or however many. I don't think of myself as Hannah, or Mary, or Mary Hannah--I think of myself as a thinking living breathing human being, as all the thoughts and feelings I have. Not as a title, not as a name.

So, I wonder, really--what IS in a name? Does your name affect who you are? Does a name have any more significance than a number, really? I think it does. Names have meaning, at least--I think that names do mean something. But does a name mean more to the person who carries it, or the people who use it? Would that which we call a rose by any other word smell as sweet? I wonder.

Comfort

So a lot of what I've been thinking about here has been how separate each person is from one another, how we really are each in our own unrelated universes. But the thing is this: while we are all so separate, we always have an inevitable relationship with each person we pass on the street, simply because we are humans. I feel some kind of connection with each person I encounter simply because of this: he or she is a thinking, feeling, living being--someone who eats and laughs and falls in love, who dreams and yawns and understands--and so do I. Of course there are things that separate us, things that make us different, but those qualities--the ones that mean human--we share those. And everything comes back to that--comes back to the things that are just there, the things we can't control or comprehend, the things that maybe we are a little afraid of, and everyone else is a little afraid of too. We are all just trying to make it through today.

It's comforting to think about--the idea that every person on this Earth is enduring basically the same struggles, has basically the same happinesses--that in that sense, we all understand each other. There's not much that's more powerful than the human touch--someone else's fingertips on your shoulder, their arms wrapped around you. It's strong. But sometimes it doesn't even have to be that--sometimes it's enough just to know that other people exist.

This is what I like about cities, and why I want to live in one: it's the perfect place to be alone without really being alone. I like being alone a lot of the time, but not in solitude. A good bit of the time, I don't want to touch people or talk to people or anything--but I hate feeling like I'm absolutely by myself. That's frightening to me. Total loneliness, isolation. The perfect comfort for me is being alone-but-not-really. It's enough--plenty--just to realize that other people are there, without actually having to interact with them. Strangers will never disappoint you, and they're all the same, and there are times, I guess, where everyone wants to be just another stranger--nothing more and nothing less.