The thing about a good book is, you can't wait to share it with people you love. Some line strikes flint in you, some phrase that perfectly encapsulates one specific understanding, which you never thought of before but have somehow always known. You'll always want to share these things, share each beautiful nugget of experience, but the sharing doesn't work that way, precisely.
No one thinks quite like you do. We do a fantastic job of tricking ourselves into believing they might. What you read might resonate with the person you share it with, or again, it might not. There's that sharp, dropping feeling when it doesn't. The person you shared with resonates with you, you think. Such a complex being as that knows me, and cares for me, and I care for them. Why should words by some stranger touch something in you but not in a loved one? What goes on in the heart of your neighbor that they can't understand your same poignancy?
How funny that fandoms can spark friendships, can create loved ones, who will then turn around and miss full swing the lob of passion that knocks us senseless. Shared experience gives life zest, and still, we'll never share as much as we'd like with those closest to us.
As a writer, these moments of lost connection are especially frightening. If two people of shared experience can't admire the same piece of work, how will strangers understand our expression? I wonder, of all those who perked at the same phrase I did, in some novel or other, how many felt just or nearly just what I felt? Few? Any?
What we make will never be the same to others as it is to ourselves. We can dream, however, that even if to many it is less, to a rare few it might be more. For every passage that fails to catch with your loved one, ten strangers might feel a tickle. One might feel known, mind and soul. The writing is not for them any more than it is for us. But if it catches, let it burn .