VIEWPOINT MAGAZINE Volume 2.1 October 2013 | Page 14

Short Story

We’ve all had a crush at least once in our lives.
We’ve all had that one person that we secretly watch,
nobody notices, but you observe everything that they
do. The person who brightens up your whole day by
talking to you, even if it’s just one sentence, even if it’s
just “Can I see your homework?”. We can all relate.
But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll see that
these petty infatuations distract us from what should
be the focus of our true passion. Looking at these
phases in more detail might help us see some of how a
simple interest can get wildly out of proportion.
Phase one: “hmmm, this person looks nice”
It all started at the Sate place. Just another day-- the
same faces, bleak and empty, nothing special, but
suddenly you notice something different. Sitting at the
table across from you sits an above average face. Your
mind races, your heart skips a beat and suddenly that
moment gets a lot more interesting, you know, the
usual response when one suddenly sees an attractive
person. You think to yourself “hmmm, this person
looks nice.”
Phase two: awareness
Sooner or later the above average face drifts out of
your mind, life goes on, seeing a random good-looking
person does not have much significance in the overall
scope of life. Until you see him again. It could be
somewhere mundane, a soccer game for example, or
at KFC. The third time's the charm, and after several
soccer games, he becomes more than just a face.
Phase three: scheming
These are the moments where you start to seem
ridiculous. The moments when you make excuses to
see him like: “Oh, I need to go to my locker, even
though I just went, but now you’re standing there and
if I go I’ll walk past you, so obviously I must go
again.” When you walk extra laps on the track just to

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By Anonymous
see him longer, and work out just because you know
he’s working out there too.
Phase four: contact
Now it’s getting serious, your scheming has been taken
to a whole new level, contact initiated. He said ‘hi’ to
me and I said ‘hi’ back. And even better, the time
I mistook him for someone else, we had a two line
conversation. I said “sorry” and he said “no problem”.
Once I asked him his name, he had to repeat it four
times because I didn’t hear it correctly and it is hard to
pronounce, but I think this conversation is significant
as far as the conversations we’ve had.
Phase five: delusion
“OH! He looked at me… Probably thinks about me
all the time, that’s why he looked at me.” “OH! He
was playing really bad… then I came and he stole the
ball…probably did that to impress me..” “We passed
each other, he glanced at me, wistful longing past
between us.” “He said hi to me, yup, he’s pining for
me.”
And so reality becomes a fantasy in your mind, you
begin to see things through what you want to happen,
instead of what is actually going on around you.
Though this situation is made up, there is truth behind
it. As humans, we tend to misdirect our passions. Thus
our passion and energy are spent pursuing something
of less value than what life has to offer. Our passion is
worth more than what we are using it for, which
makes us less than what we should be, or could be. It
starts small, with simply noticing something and not
being wise in what you let yourself think about or
spend your time and energy on. But who knows what
it could turn out if you’re not mindful. Everyone has a
lot of potential, to make a difference in the world
around us, and passion is a really strong guiding force,
let it lead us to better things.