Secrets in the Wind

When we’re too free with information about ourselves, we risk sabotaging what little magnetism our personalities may possess.  We become open books whose pages hold little allure. I equate the experience to the once-common practice of reading the newspaper. That exercise was largely an automatic response to the presence of the morning coffee; when something of pressing interest took place, the newspaper was abandoned in favor of CNN or the local television news.  So it is with revealing our own activities and thoughts. People become so accustomed to learning about them that the routine is just boring. Almost anything else that captures the attention of people who know us becomes more appealing than our random revelations about ourselves. The only solution is silence. Or so it seems.

But memory is an autumn leaf that
murmurs a while in the Autumn wind and
then is heard no more.
     ~~~~~

If you reveal your secrets to the wind,
you should not blame the wind for
revealing them to the trees.

~ Khalil Gibran ~
1883-1931

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Relationships change with the introduction of additional parties to one’s relationships. For example, Person A has two good friends: Person B and Person C. The interactions between Person A and Person B please both parties, as do the interactions between Person A and Person C. And Person B and Person C may have a perfectly satisfactory relationship with one another. But when Person B and Person C engage together with Person A, all the participants may find the interchange somewhat—or completely—unsatisfying. The intimacy of the relationship between Person A and Person B (and all the other combinations) degrades and becomes less fulfilling.

This is not always the case, of course. But it can explain why a person can have multiple sets of friends who, for whatever reason, do not mix well in certain combinations. Forcing the mix can ruin some or all of the relationships because the reason for the strained engagement are not always obvious. Friends can simply seem to drift apart for no reason, all the while the reason (obvious to a disinterested third party, perhaps) is an unwelcome infringement on the type and depth of intimacy in the relationship.  We sabotage ourselves with the most innocuous motivations.

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The splint on my left hand is both restrictive and cumbersome. And the pain beneath the splint is growing stronger with each passing hour. There’s no indication that it will become intolerable; it simply will be bothersome until I can remove the splint and/or until the pain fools me and morphs into something more sinister and dangerous. In the meantime, I’ll just whimper and whine.

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I hear squirrels frolicking on the roof. While some people would find that noise whimsical and somewhat cute, I find it troublesome and intrusive. I’m of a mind to climb onto the roof with a high-powered pellet gun and launch into an attack on the beasts. I’d take a more powerful weapon with me—a Winchester Model 94 125th Anniversary High Grade 30-30 Win Lever-Action Rifle—perhaps, but I do not own even the imaginary pellet gun, so wandering around on the roof with a $2,000 gun is well beyond the scope of reality. But the dream lives on, if only in muted shades of grey; the dream is not sufficiently powerful to merit showing itself in pure, bright, enhanced color. So the squirrels will live on, as was always the case but which now is acknowledged by virtue of the fact that I’ve abandoned my murderous fantasy.

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About John Swinburn

"Love not what you are but what you may become."― Miguel de Cervantes
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