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Sometimes I look through the photo albums of strangers. I see the highlights of other lives, the moments captured at the height of euphoria. I see the stretches of happy times, the trips, the visits, the special days that spread their glow through the rest of the year. But to me, there is no rest of the year. I skip from high point to high point, oblivious to subtext, unknowing of the hard times between those peaks. I look on, and I want to live their lives, see what it's like being someone else, wallow in the exotic expanse of another's existence. It's the same feeling I get after I finish reading a long book, that strange trickle of foreign thoughts that brush against my own. I can never dig into them, explore them, heed my passing whim, and so I never realize how unlike reality my view of their life is.