Time and life have this way of eventually showing people for who they are. And of filtering them out. It doesn’t always happen suddenly, through major events. Sometimes a few months are enough.
Most often, there is no great argument or clear ending. Another conversation where once again I am the one asking how someone is doing, remembering what they were supposed to do, taking an interest in what is happening in their life. Another question left unanswered. Until eventually it turns out that, in fact, there has been nothing left to sustain for quite some time. Someone simply stops writing. Someone disappears somewhere between one "how are you?" and the next. And suddenly you realize that you actually missed the moment when it became one-sided.
Recently, I looked through a few old conversations with people I knew. Not to hold anyone accountable for anything. More out of curiosity. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but a certain pattern became apparent to me very quickly. I saw very clearly something I think I had previously been unwilling to see.
How many times I asked how someone was doing. How many times I remembered someone’s important day, problem, or something that mattered to them. How many times I tried to keep a conversation going, even when things were very difficult for me and I didn’t have much energy myself. And how rarely, on the other side, did even an ordinary, human, polite question come back to me: "And you, how are you?" It seems like nothing. One sentence. A small thing. And yet reciprocity is made up of precisely such little things. They are what sustain a bond.
So I started thinking about all those people who appeared in my life over the years and later disappeared from it. Without goodbye, without warning. About those who perhaps didn’t know what to do with my sadness. About those for whom it may have been easier to leave than to stay beside someone who isn’t always funny, smiling, and cheerful. And this is not an accusation. I don’t hold any particular grudge against all of them. I feel less and less need to hold people accountable for what they didn’t give me. Rather, I am learning to look at things as they are. And I think I have also learned something important about my own expectations in the process.
Not everyone knows how to stay by someone else’s fire when that fire does not give only warmth. Most people don’t. People are generally self-centered. They primarily want to take. To get something for themselves from their relationships with others. Very few are willing to give. That is why most people stay with us only as long as we give them what they want, expect, or need. Today, transactional relationships dominate. And it doesn’t matter whether we are talking about romantic relationships, family relationships, or friendships. Although I suspect many people involved in such relationships would loudly protest such a claim, saying that it doesn’t apply to them. I have come to the conclusion that my disagreement with this state of affairs is one of the (many) reasons why Gorean philosophy is so close to me.
Loyalty to "our own" people and places. Putting the bond itself above personal gain. That is very Gorean. On Gor, what mattered above all was the bond – with one’s own Home Stone, with one’s own caste. And loyalty to them. Individual gain could matter, but it was not the priority. The modern – transactional approach to human relationships is precisely the opposite. It places subjectively understood personal benefit above the bond itself.
Of course, simply being present in someone’s circle does not yet make a person "one of our own". On Gor, it was not enough simply to appear within the territory of a particular Home Stone to become part of it, a full-fledged member. That is not how it works. Just as no one hangs pictures on the walls of their home of everyone who has ever crossed their threshold. It requires belonging. Mutual responsibility. Remembrance. And belonging is something serious. It is an obligation. The result of mutually nurturing a bond, loyalty, and concrete actions. Not merely presence or declarations. And I think that distinction has really struck me lately.
I realized that I am not interested in collecting people. I never have been. Perhaps that is why I have always had relatively few people around me. I operate on the assumption that friends are not Pokémon. They are not trophies. And I don’t need a large number of names that look good on a contact list. I don’t need ten people I can message "hey, what’s up?" just to prove to myself that I am not alone. I would rather have a few relationships in which the question "how are you?" actually means something. A few people who notice my absence. People around whom I don’t have to pretend that everything is fine when it isn’t, just to "earn" their interest and presence in my life.
Not every person who passes through my life becomes part of my Home Stone. Not everyone is entitled to a place at my table simply because they have sat there before. But it works the other way, too. If I consider someone "one of my people", I do not treat that bond as some casual acquaintance. That is when loyalty appears. Remembrance. Obligation. Ordinary concern for what is happening on the other side. Belonging means, after all, that someone else’s home, their well-being, and their affairs become almost as important to us as our own. This is the kind of bond and human relationship that interests me and that I try to build and nurture in my life.
This is not coldness. It is selectivity. And selectivity does not have to come from contempt. It can also come from respect for what we truly want to build or preserve. Healthy selectivity is absolutely necessary. Because a home does not need a crowd. It needs people who genuinely want to be there and remember that the fire sometimes needs tending. People who ask. People who know how to answer, not only when things are easy. The rest can leave.
A fire is no less real simply because not everyone wants to sit beside it. I have no intention of counting how many people I have around me. I am not interested in maintaining bonds with those who themselves left long ago and went their own way. Because not everyone has to stay. But those who do stay should mean something.
No comments:
Post a Comment