(Apologies En Masse to the Women in My Life)

With you, I made the mistake of assuming that most people desire to better their positions in life; there are two mistakes in that premise:  1) that my definition of “better” is the correct one, and 2) that simply, some people don’t.   I held on to that belief far too long, when all the signs showed you were ready to move on, I just couldn’t let go.

With you, I made the mistake of being TOO kind and loving.  Instead of being a selfish bastard and holding on to you for dear life, I encouraged you to grow and fly.  And you have, and you are an amazing woman, and I think of you every day.

With you, I mistook lust for love.  You were, and remain, the most beautiful, desirous woman I have ever know, and it didn’t help that I had known you for decades, that helped build up an unsatisfied fervor in me.  I gave up way too much to satisfy my carnal desires, and that was a mistake.  I miss your passion.

With you, I thought we were just playing, and you didn’t.  I didn’t see those signs from you.  The fact we were on opposite sides of the planet didn’t help.  I cancelled a trip to be with you, meet your family, and you took that to be the end, and that’s what it became.

With you, I also didn’t hear what you wanted, and was deaf to your needs.  Life would have turned out considerably different for both of us had I been listening.  I had a chance to rectify it later, and I did not.  I can’t tell you why, but I am sorry.

With you, we were engaged in a power play to manage ‘us”.  We never recognized it while we were in it.  We were two powerful people, neither willing to give an inch.  We even had to both control managing the end.  To get in the last word.  To plunge the final knife.

With you, I failed to recognize the unconditional love you had for me, and like all foolish greedy people, wanted more in life that just that.  Most adults spend their entire lifetimes looking for that, I had it, and I threw it away.

With you, it was another time in my life where I wasn’t paying attention, or you assumed I knew what you were thinking, as you didn’t verbalize it.  And so our divide came, with a whimper and not a bang.  You saw an opportunity to repair that years later, but still hadn’t learned to speak up, and I came in and out of your life as I had done before.  I apologize for hurting you twice.  You are a wonderful person, and you don’t deserve the pain I caused you.  We would have had a great life together.

With you, I don’t know what went wrong, I’ve never been sure anything went wrong between you and I, so much as between your father and I.  Ultimately, you married the man he chose for you, and it went poorly. I wonder what our life would have been like without his interference?  We’ll never know, and you are content to leave it in the past, tho others encouraged us to try again.

I’m judgemental, I admit it.  I wasn’t aware of how
judgemental I have been until recently. I was brought
up to believe I was “special” (not entirely a bad thing),
and this can lead to a certain air of superiority whether
one deserves it or not.

Some people say I exude this naturally, that it’s not
in the way I look, act, or speak, but rather just a projection of confidence and experience.

Some people find this reassuring.  People with low self-esteem do not; they tend to find it repressive and intimidating (there, see, I am being judgemental again!).

I used to firmly believe that I respected everybody’s right
to be whomever they wanted to be, and do whatever they wanted to do, with the following important caveat:  “AS LONG AS IT DOESN’T HURT ANYBODY.”

I guess age or experiences have tempered that feeling a bit, we can insert “MOST” before who people want to be and what they want to do.

But more solidly than ever, I maintain the right to keep the caveat, and it has grown stronger over the years.  AS LONG AS IT DOESN’T HURT ANYBODY.

Now that phrase, in itself, could be called judgemental all on it’s own, as people are going to have different definitions of “hurt.”

I guess my criteria is, or hopefully, and should be, “common  sense.”

Regardless of our upbringing, when we become adults, we all have a sense of “right and wrong” when it comes to dealing with people, unless we are mentally ill.

I hereby give the entire world permission to live whatever life they want, and do whatever they want to do, as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.  Especially me.

I wish insurance companies were required to do “factual” advertising.  Like the number of claims paid, percentages, percentage of each claim paid.  No, instead, we are faced with a spate of humorous commercials, and apparently the insurance companies hope that we won’t notice what goes on behind the scenes?

Or perhaps the execs picked humor as their ad vehicle because they are ‘laughing all the way to the bank.’

Lizards. Men in animal costumes.  Cars that rebuild themselves.

As someone who experience Hurricane Katrina, and who has a number of peers with life-threatening health conditions, I say “shame on you” sinsurance companies.

We pay, and pay, and pay, and you don’t pay, don’t pay, don’t pay.

When it looks like you are going to be forced to pay, you cancel us, or jack our rates to beyond belief.

Since mathematically, insurance is about shared risk, how does it work to hike one person’s rates to the stratosphere?  Why not lift everyone’s a penny?   Better yet, don’t raise rates still you start paying out at least 90% of the premiums that come in, and cash on hand, less operating costs.  10% is a very reasonable margin in any business.

Quit advertising since it’s all bullshit anyway.  That’ll save ‘us’ even more money.

That’s the way I see it.

No, not an homage to the John Lennon song, but rather, the story of the last decade of my life.  After a terribly fulfilling 8 years in China, I abandoned that, and my home there, a real “home”, with community, friends, neighbors I interacted with on a daily basis.

Why did I leave?  For “love.”  Or lust. Or whatever it was.  In its intended form, it lasted less than 60 days after I returned to US terra firma.  It then dragged on for another year of agony, in one form or another, 3 states.  Geez, now I see ANOTHER pattern in my life!

Someone once told me they expected their relationships to end suddenly in the middle of the night, usually with a restraining order attached.

That’s never been me.  My relationships have all ended with a whimper, over time.  We went through the stages, as another lover of mine had put forth, the “beginning of the end,”  “the middle of the end”, and so on.  You get the point. (Tho I admit it didn’t dawn on me at the time!)

So I started over when i came back from China, then again when the relationship I came for ended, work took me to geriatric heaven (Florida) for a short period, and I started again the next year  in La Jolla.  Then yet again, with my very “final move” to New Orleans in 2001.   And that was too be it.  For moving.  For work.  For relationships.  Spend my ‘golden age’ years in South Louisiana, loving the food, the people, my new friends, the arts, the culture.

Katrina ended all that.  And I started over again, in Portland, in 2007.

And now, it seems, circumstances are such that it will happen again.

There used to be a time when I would look forward to these transitions.  Each new adventure, locale, meant all “new”, and I loved it.

I’m dreading this time. No plan, no purpose, no place.  I have maybe three options, which I would rank from “horrible” to “catastrophic.”

It’s my own doing.

I have been cursed my whole life to believe there is goodness in everybody, even though my experiences should have taught me differently.

But if you don’t believe in the goodness of the world, and have hope for the future every day, what do you have?

A dark eddy in your soul.  Sucking you deeper and deeper into the quagmire of the darker side of life, where some people choose to live and prosper…or not.

Not me, tho there are many people who would disagree with me – and not believe I feel that way.

But that’s the way I see it.

It was 4:30 AM in Copenhagen.   I was awake, and restless, my girlfriend was sleeping soundly in the bed.  I thought I would read for a bit.

The woman had started journaling early in life, nearly every day since her early teens.  I had been to her parent’s home, and there were shelves and shelves of journals.   She always told me there was nothing private about them, if I ever wanted to pick one up and glance through it, go ahead.

I was never tempted.  People deserve a certain amount of privacy, even in a relationship or marriage, I believe.

But here was I, bored out of my skull, and here was her journal, sitting beside me on the nightstand, and I picked it up, leafed through a few pages, nothing very interesting, til I came to one of the most recent entries, she had apparently written on this trip.  We were supposed to be working Northern Europe and Scandinavia, and were employing all manners of transportation, lots of trains meant lots of idle time, and she had apparently used the time to write about me, and us.

We were at a very advanced stage in our relationship, “the beginning of the middle” she called it (stupid me, I didn’t realize if there was a beginning and a middle, something came after that!).   We talked a lot about how we were going to live our lives together, and where, and about children, and the things passionate couples talk about.

In her journal entry, she talked about how I was very nearly perfect for her.  My zest for life (some others would argue with that these days!), my passion for her, for us together.  She loved my cooking, my stories, my writing.  She said that maybe she had met the “first man ever who didn’t want to OWN her.”  And apparently that was important.

And then came the “buts….”.   “If only he had ‘this trait’ or ‘that trait’ or ‘did this’ or ‘did that’ like (naming other past loves).

I didn’t realize at the time that ‘wishing’ was a lot different that actually ‘wanting’ or ‘expecting’.  And so I was terribly hurt reading these passages.  To me, they said she loved me, but she still hung onto certain aspects of others.

I left the room, the sun was coming up, and walked for hours.  I went to the harbor and sneered at the Little Mermaid statue.  From there I went to a pub for an eye opener (yes, I used to drink like a fish).

By mid-morning, somehow she had found me, astonishing since she had no idea where I had gone.  But we used to be able to do that do each other.  We could sense each other’s presence, and that always fascinated me.

I told her why I was hurt, and she told me why that was silly.

I didn’t believe her, but I understand now what she was saying.  I almost walked away from her permanently that day, and maybe I should have, maybe I shouldn’t have.

Here’s the point:  In life, relationships, business, jobs, some people hop around and around, looking for something “better”, and always clinging to the hope that there is something “better” out there.  Or perhaps they are encouraged by friends that “you can do better” or you “deserve better”, and you believe them and embark on that quest, often leaving people, places, or opportunities behind that maybe shouldn’t have been left behind.   They say “time answers all questions” but to me, it never does, it just leaves you with even more questions.

Human beings make mistakes.  They aren’t perfect.  No one is.   Someone may be 70% good, and 30% not so good.  Every one of us has good and bad qualities.

Your friends or family may tell you “never settle.”  But you know what?  Life is about settling, really.  You may call it something else – compromise.  Or comfort.  Or whatever.

In the end, a person, a situation, an opportunity doesn’t necessarily have to be “perfect.”  They only have to be perfect for you.

That’s how I see it.