Her name is admirable

In one of those moments of retrospection which I have now had several times these past couple years (a clear sign that I am getting on and am no longer wasting time on imagining limitless possibilities of the future since I have learned to predict it and budget for it so very reliably) I was reflecting this morning on a person I once knew. I knew her for many years and quite intimately; yet it is only now that we have not seen each other for many years that I notice things about her which I now realize were quite ugly. To put it short, I suppose, I would have to say that my friend was greedy in the word's most ordinary, vulgar sense: she was consumed by an intense desire for money and property plain and simple.

This impression was tempered by the generosity which she showed towards her children; but this, too -- and I did not realize it then -- was really a measure of her greed: she simply did not distinguish between her and her children. Acquiring on behalf of her children was therefore an extension of acquiring for herself. She seemed generous towards me, too, but that generosity was not really generous: my friend was not giving me gifts, she was buying something she wanted: my friendship.

Throughout our association I could see signs -- behaviors and reactions in my friend-- which disturbed me, yet I was somehow able to overlook them, disguise them from myself. (Sex is a great coloring agent). I liked her and for this reason blamed what I saw on my own misperception -- I must have misobserved, I thought -- or extenuating circumstances -- perhaps she was tired, etc. Overall, I suppose, I was less blind about my friend and for a shorter period of time than I was about my mother: perhaps life has taught me something then, perhaps I have made progress.

One hopes, of course, that one can be even more astute in one's social engagements in the future; but given the nature and quality of my experience with family and friends -- the statistics are not encouraging -- it would perhaps be wiser not to bother with further engagements in the first place.