Blue eyed child? How cliché.

Tis better to have loved and lost… No man is an island… You love a person for who they are, not for who you want them to be… You have to love yourself before you can love another…

What is it about clichés that gives them their longevity? What is it about them that inspire recitation by those whose intent is to heal or help? What is it about these phrases that have allowed them to become the go-to guys in our lexicon of social interaction?

Is it the ease of which they can be applied? The band-aid remedy they offer? Is it the fact that they confuse in their attempt to sooth? Or is it the faux enlightenment one feels upon hearing a cliché?

Shit. I don’t know.

What I do know, what I have experienced, is that it’s the clichés that keep us going. At least sometimes, and that’s okay. It’s only a cliché until you’re living it.

It’s the clichés that bind us to those who have gone through what we’re going through. It is the clichés that don’t necessarily say “I told you so”, but they do make the face. There is an old Filipino expression that parents say to reckless children, “You’re only going where I’ve been, and I’m already on my way back.” A smart-ass (me) once asked, “Then why haven’t we met yet? Why haven’t we seen eye to eye.” It’s the clichés that try to teach. But then again, they’re just words. Descartes, Descartes, Descartes.

I am in the business of creating the clichés of tomorrow. What you read now may one day be cliché, and that is fine with me. In fact, I invite it. All life is fleeting, all being is transitory. Nothing remains avant-guard forever. Clichés are fashionable, and as with fashion, popularity shifts, trends arise and subside. You can’t really say how long something will remain in style, but one thing cannot be debated:

Each and every human being will see bell-bottoms fall in and out of popularity three times in their lifetime.

This is a scientific fact.

Clichés are invisible strings; they are the tethers that tie us to the past. They are long lines of braided words, passed down, passed through, written, revised, translated, forgotten, and eventually remembered. Of them the largest volumes are dedicated to, yes, you guessed it, love. Yes, love is a cliché, and yes, it is a cliché to say that. Love is a tight rope; walking it is tricky, but the trick of love is finding something unique. Movies lead and lie. We walk the line. We fall.