| | Would that the cigar had been post coital. As it was, I hadnt smoked in ten years and made this fact public by several minutes of paroxysms and chest pains. I am too old for experiments in regression. The libations were another story. Having given up drinking in misguided sobriety years ago, the first sip of wine was heaven. Several glasses later I was expounding on relationships and life when, in between the veritable genius of my insight, I looked around at my friends. I had not seen them in years. And yet sitting there, it seemed as if we had never parted. That we were even together at this point, was a stroke of good fortune. It almost didn’t happen. In the wake of a messy divorce, and an even messier second attempt at marriage, we had parted ways seven years prior. In some way, the easy collegiality and natural friendship had been clouded not by reason but rationality. The more I applied rational to the equation, the more I had convinced myself that we *should not* be friends. I was after all, informed by aristotlean/objectivist philosophy. They were not. I was, any way you cut it, the enlightened one. An air of superiority can suck the life out of any party. The truth (arrived at by reason and not rationality) was on the other side of the mirror. In a serious dishonesty with self, I was, simply, ashamed. I looked at the world through a finely tuned sense of morality and judgement. It must be that they did the same, Then in struck me that it wasn’t their judgement I had to be concerned about. It was my own. So far had I fallen from, and failed to be, the *ideal man*! Hiding behind objectivism, I had culled my life of that which gave me pleasure, these friends. Imagine my surprise to feel pleasure in their company. It turns out I had judged myself more harshly than anyone else. Their friendship was a value. Their friendship enriched me. Being with them was an entirely selfish and beautiful thing. Like the wine I held in my hand, too young, not expensive, but in a very real sense, satisfying.
To any who care to comment, who are your friends? And why? Has anyone experienced a challenge keeping or making friends or lovers who share different philosophies of life?
John
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