I met a guy, and when I asked him online the next day what he was doing, he replied in the most casual tone:
"I'm here in the computer with my cat, with the t.v. on, and without paying attention to what's on the screen. I know, bad habit."
He had bad habits. That was enough for me to know he was someone worth meeting.
Some days before, my friend Felix had asked me while we were walking in the aisles of the gold museum what my impression of him and our circle of friends was. I thought that I was unable to do so with my friends and was tempted to reply that I do not think about it, but when I came home and thought it over, I realized I do have a profile for every person.
I think about people and characters in a sort of non conventional way. I first list all the reasons why I could dislike them: bad habits, questionable behavior, interaction problems, quirks, etc. The second step would be enumerating all the reasons that I have for liking this person: energy, sparkling personality, cleverness. If the positive outshines the negative, who cares about their defects anymore? The greatest part of many people that I've known is that their positive assets are such that make the bad things about them even look attractive. Kids usually like impeccable characters like superman, who hasn't ever killed a bug. We critical adults prefer people with a little dirt in their nails.
A way of saying someone that I like him or her for me, as atypical as it sounds, could be like:
"You're loud, you rarely filter what you think and say whatever comes to your mind, you find way too many excuses for everything, but you know what? you have a beautiful smile, your sense of humor is terrific and you are good bringing people together." --That's an actual description I have for a friend of mine.
At the end, Felix should not care that much about my judgment. I probably listed the little things I might not cope with and took a look at the remaining goodness to shut them down. The outcome it's a little obvious: I unquestionably like this group of people. I assume they too have a list of the reasons of why they wouldn't like me, but I appreciate their efforts for doing the same that I do and putting the bad things behind.
Real people. That's what I think they are.
There is a well-known spanish songwriter that always says: "las malas compañías son las mejores". In his last concert he also told a story about how a friend once asked him how he was, and he replied with a very common "i'm happy", but his friend reacted with a: "How could you stoop so low?". Nothing more true, if you put a little thought on it.
ResponderEliminarLife is chaos, disorder, confusion, that's its essence, Who are we, plain humans, to go agains it?
Well, humans, along history, have had the bad habit of trusting reason, and building a aprhensible reality, when there is not such thing. All the way back, from the greeks to the Renaissance, humans have fool theirselves, and they have been deceive everytime.
So, with the risk of sounding existentialist, I ask myself: Why is it that the idea of a world without order is so uncomfortable and so immensely unmanageable? Isn't it the time to acknowledge and embrace the fact that life is incomprehensible and chaotic, just like postmodernism invite us to.
I do, I accept the disorder of reality, I suck it up and try to live with it, as we all should. The painful injustice and the great evil of the world does not surprise me, neither does the goodness. In all our lifes we seek for happiness and stability, but those are boring as hell, trust me, i should know.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I like everything you wrote and couldn't agree more.
ResponderEliminar