“Choose friends who will stick to you till the end, through thick and thin” Shirdi Sai Baba Indian Saint (incarnation of Shiva)
There is always the one who got away.
It’s amazing how it’s the things that never quite got off the ground, the fledgling flight, that linger in the memory. Well, it is to me … considering how many things have got of the ground and yielded fantabulous results it’s odd how sometimes my mind wanders back to the things that never worked out.
I found a letter yesterday when I was trying to find a box of receipts that I was supposed to give to my publisher 16 months ago.
I have to admit that even though on the surface I appear tidy and organised (a place for everything and everything in its place)… I run on a kind of bizarre chaos theory. Tidy everything away so that my living/working space is in order and then play the game of “where the hell did I tidy THAT away to?”.
Anyway. About three hours before I found the box of receipts (tidied into a box labelled RECEIPTS which were then put in a box of garden decorations last used during a Wimbledon themed BBQ) I found a letter, (in a box labelled OLD XMAS CARDS FOR RECYCLING) complete with the postage stamp bearing the postmark Upolu, Western Samoa.
My mind was automatically transported back to a time not so long ago when I was actively pretending to have an interest in Golf. (The sport not the Volkswagen best seller).
I tentatively opened the letter – lord knows why I was so nervous about it… I knew the contents by heart…it’s just that a few years had past since I received it and I had this strange feeling the contents may be different this time… but of course they were not. I knew the end result, I was too loud so he took the job at Penina Golf Course on the other side of the world to ensure he could get some quiet.
Any how open it I did and his spidery smudged script (he was left handed but insisted in writing with fountain pens) still looked exactly the same, and the words remained the same…
“…I feel colourless ,kind of sluggishly inadequate – which I know I am not but the dazzlingly flamboyancy of the light you shine puts everything in the shade. I’m not asking you to change… you could never change, and no one would want you to change. I’ll miss you laughing and crying in equal amounts of abandon (see! you do things that just seem weird on paper (!)– but happy or sad it seem doesn’t matter to your tear ducts – I’ve seen you do both simultaneously roaring hysterically while tears pump down your cheeks. :0)
But I have had to face it - you are everything that I am not: impulsive, quixotic, boiling over with passion about everything. You tear through life with no reserve oblivious to the more cautious sensibilities of those around you. And this is good…we are all more alive in your company. You make me realise my own dispassion – how unmoved I can be by stuff that really does matter. I’m a blanket on your fire – in the end my reserve will bring you down…you already are less and less the irrepressible life-force you were and I cannot watch us descend into the kind of silence…”
How’s that for a IT’S NOT ME IT IS SOOOOOOOOOOOO YOU!!.
So - off he went to pick golf balls out of the Pacific Ocean where frankly my dazzling flamboyancy couldn’t bother him further. Funny enough it was my dazzling flamboyancy that was the light that drew that particular moth at the time! Definitely a case of scorched wings and an extreme retreat to the safety of the islands of Australasia. With a bit of luck a mute hula girl is brightening his days and nights now.
Anyway, bitter reminisces of lost golf instructors apart, it certainly got me thinking about how it is the very things that attract you can be the very things that make you want to run for the hills.
CONFIDENCE
Insecurity and desperation are possibly the biggest turn offs. So we all go for someone who has an aura of confidence. How long before that same self confidence become perceived as arrogance though?
INDIVIDUALITY
No one likes another drone of the conveyor belt. So we all go for someone with something about them… a little personal twist that makes them unique. But how long before you just start wishing that quirk would vanish and take them with it?
HUMOUR/CHARM
Everyone likes to laugh and everyone likes to be charmed. So we all look for someone with a G.S.O.H and can say the right thing. But how long before you wish they’d be a little more serious and start praying they’ll put a sock in it with the charming act?
CHAT
We all need intellectual stimulation. So we all go for someone who can hold up their end of a conversation. But how long before meaningful dialogue just is another excuse for a row?
APPEARANCE
No one like to be dating the pity case. So we all like to be seen with someone who will generate at least a little envy amongst our peers. But how long before paranoia sets in and every approach is seen as a threat?
PASSION
We all appreciate the effort, energy and devotion it needs to care about something. So we all like to be with someone who embodies their beliefs. But how long before they bore you so much on the topic you can’t tell where their immersion in their passion begins and they end?
Thing is we all are fickle creatures. There is a strange physiology that makes it so that repeated exposure to stimuli can make us like someone more – and equally can make us hate them. Worse still we are built to be attracted to people who have the skills we lack (to keep the species going I suppose) BUT it has been proven that once we perceive a dissimilarity with another person – it’s all down hill from there… even the traits we once liked or were pretty neutral about become detested.
Going back to my run-away golf instructor by way of example, what he thought he wanted was someone who had strengths in all the areas he lacked – someone who was smart, funny, daring, eccentric/loud and passionate. What he really wanted was someone who was smart, ironic, conventional/quiet and thoughtful. Basically – what he really wanted was to have a relationship with someone just like him on a good day (but with boobs!).
I guess we really have an unrealistic level of optimism about how much we expect other people to be compatible with us. What we really want to believe is that other people share our personality traits, or perception, our sense of humour… all the things we hold dear. Of course as soon as we get really close to someone we find out that they are just not us.. that they are a different being… and as a result we start to find time with them some kind of purgatory. Jean-Paul Sartre went further than even purgatory… he claimed “on average – other people ARE hell”.
Well…. I wouldn’t be English if I didn’t find reason to doubt the thinking’s of a Frenchman. (Leading philosopher and indefatigable pursuer of philosophical reflection or no!). I think not JPS! I think other people are heaven.
I think compatibility can be found in other people’s kindness, consideration and their ability to allow another to express their thoughts without treating them with cruelty, or ridicule. I think that can be found in person who is nothing like “me on a good day”. I think opposites can attract to do what cannot be achieved solo. I think you can bring two sides of puzzle together to make a complimentary whole. I think in that circumstance a true dazzling light will shine out that is as heaven like as you are likely to find on Earth.
Quixotic I may be, be I still think most of us would give those kind of odds a punt.
Unless of course you are the sort of person who would rather be writing letters from an 18 hole golf course in the pacific…with a fountain pen!
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