May 19, 2002

  • I often wonder about people and how they look at, and feel about, others.

    The friends we make tend to say much about us; and in some cases, perhaps something we don’t like.

    I have, in my life, met a few people I considered my friends who, thinking back, really weren’t. What puzzled me about them, and eventually led me to the realization that they were not good for me, was that people were like holograms to them. Just things. No relationship was ever dropped, no tie severed for any reason, because they always felt as if it could be ‘useful’ later on...for something. Freinds were...collected.

    I’ve only recently quantified this into what you read now because I’ve had a chance to contemplate my own life in the past few weeks and have tried to put a finger on some of the regret I feel in hindsight with a few of my more recent run-ins with people of this sort.

    I can only hope that others, seeing this, (or perhaps meeting the people I have known and trusted) will not think badly of me, or consider me weak; but realize that perhaps my hope to find something true and healthy in them was just a misplaced, Quixotian optimism that I am, and will always be, afflicted with.

    A certain amount of naïve is inevitable when giving benefit of doubt. If only for a short while.

    The friends we make say much about us, the ones we keep tell us just as much, about them.