biwords
Aug 14, 2007, 3:27 PM
Another site member surprised me the other day by PMing me with a request that I briefly indicate my Philosophy of Life by return PM. I was surprised, and not only because I'm not convinced that I have a life, much less a philosophy of one. I was also a little concerned that anyone in search of such a philosophy would see me as a potential consultant. In fact I'll do my best to reply, disappointed though he may be with the result.
Anyway, while thinking about this I saw that yet another site member who had described herself as 'fiercely devoted' to me in her profile has now silently airbrushed me out of it. So part of my philosophy of life is: it's not easy measuring just how fiercely devoted 'fierce devotion' is, or, to generalize a little more: statements in the emotional realm always implicitly end with the words "until further notice".
Another two-bit philosophical observation of sorts could be extracted from a memory of my highschool days. I was gaga over a girl whom we'll call Leah. Leah liked me, though I couldn't tell whether she Liked Me That Way and was too shy to find out. But we hung out together. If she did Like Me That Way, it couldn't have lasted long, because as time went on she spoke more and more about her fresh infatuation with another student, Graham Eames. Tall, even blonder than Leah (who prided herself on her blondeness), cocky, arrogant -- in a word, irresistible. And, dope that I was, I spent far more time than I should have listening to her rhapsodies and nodding supportively. A few months later she moved away, memorably telling me "I know this sounds awful, but I'm sick of being almost the only blonde Christian girl in a highschool full of Jews". I answered, "Uh, well, Mazl Tov, I guess".
The story would have ended there, except that a few years later I learned that she had actually married Eames, who took a job working for Leah's father. Dad set him up with an office and a secretary. Leah became pregnant. Soon afterwards, Eames decamped with the secretary.
I told my informant something on the order of 'Ah, well, I wouldnt have left her" and she replied "Well, hon, some people just can't tell the difference between diamonds and trash". Which, however flattering, was hardly apt, since I was no diamond, in the rough or otherwise, and I knew Eames well enough to know that he wasn't trash. As we would later say, he 'had issues'; but he wasn't trash.
That said, my profile-rewriting site member is at the point of making certain choices in her life, or perhaps more exactly, of growing more and more comfortable with choices she's already made. I just hope her Spidey sense enables her to distinguish diamonds from trash. It's a useful skill. Ask someone for their Philosophy of Life, and you're likely to hear something as obvious as that.
Anyway, while thinking about this I saw that yet another site member who had described herself as 'fiercely devoted' to me in her profile has now silently airbrushed me out of it. So part of my philosophy of life is: it's not easy measuring just how fiercely devoted 'fierce devotion' is, or, to generalize a little more: statements in the emotional realm always implicitly end with the words "until further notice".
Another two-bit philosophical observation of sorts could be extracted from a memory of my highschool days. I was gaga over a girl whom we'll call Leah. Leah liked me, though I couldn't tell whether she Liked Me That Way and was too shy to find out. But we hung out together. If she did Like Me That Way, it couldn't have lasted long, because as time went on she spoke more and more about her fresh infatuation with another student, Graham Eames. Tall, even blonder than Leah (who prided herself on her blondeness), cocky, arrogant -- in a word, irresistible. And, dope that I was, I spent far more time than I should have listening to her rhapsodies and nodding supportively. A few months later she moved away, memorably telling me "I know this sounds awful, but I'm sick of being almost the only blonde Christian girl in a highschool full of Jews". I answered, "Uh, well, Mazl Tov, I guess".
The story would have ended there, except that a few years later I learned that she had actually married Eames, who took a job working for Leah's father. Dad set him up with an office and a secretary. Leah became pregnant. Soon afterwards, Eames decamped with the secretary.
I told my informant something on the order of 'Ah, well, I wouldnt have left her" and she replied "Well, hon, some people just can't tell the difference between diamonds and trash". Which, however flattering, was hardly apt, since I was no diamond, in the rough or otherwise, and I knew Eames well enough to know that he wasn't trash. As we would later say, he 'had issues'; but he wasn't trash.
That said, my profile-rewriting site member is at the point of making certain choices in her life, or perhaps more exactly, of growing more and more comfortable with choices she's already made. I just hope her Spidey sense enables her to distinguish diamonds from trash. It's a useful skill. Ask someone for their Philosophy of Life, and you're likely to hear something as obvious as that.