by Dr David, Editor / Publisher
If I have any charm, my honesty is it. What you see is what you get. As Popeye put it, "I yam what I yam." If anything, I get better when you get to know me.
Perhaps that's why I tend to take people at face value, giving them the benefit of the doubt. You couldn't call me innocent, but in this I might be somewhat childlike. Sometimes this openness gets me hurt, but overall, I'd rather be naive.
Still, I have learned, mostly the hard way, that people usually put their best foot forward. That's fine on a short term basis. But if you stick around until that back foot steps through, you often find it to be made of clay. Get to know them, push a little here or there, and the whole facade crumbles.
I'm not referring here to intentional deception. It's just that most people really do not know themselves. Someone who has thought deeply about life is already a philosopher, and how many of us are philosophers? Most of us have just cobbled together our personality from various opinions we've picked up along the way.
That might be okay if we had had enough opinions to choose from and enough time to do the choosing. But often we've had to adapt rapidly, with insufficient information, while under great stress. The child makes up twisted rationales for the twisted irrationalities he suffers. Going back and untwisting those neurotic beliefs requires a certain amount of re-suffering of those traumas. It's like reopening an infected wound to clean it. We put it off, even while it diminishes or threatens our life.
A case in point:
Dropping Veronica off at the bus station recently, I crossed paths with a man I knew from years ago at the Saturday Market. Both of us having some feeling for our common Jewishness, in a fit of sociability I invited him over for a Friday night, Sabbath dinner.
The man, like many of us here in San Miguel, is strange; not bohemian-old-school-SMA strange, but professorial, not-used-to-talking-to-ordinary-folk strange. His delivery is very controlled, with frequent pregnant pauses, as if he were always about to impart some well thought out information. To his credit, he frequently does give forth such gems, but his pedantic tone resonates oddly when he is making small talk.
He came bearing a bottle of very good wine. I sat him down just on the other side of the archway between my dining room and kitchen while I continued with dinner preparation. The acoustics and line of sight were fine for conversation, but the subject matter was not to my liking. Traditionally, the Jewish Sabbath is a time to leave behind all thought of work and worldly concerns. But my guest, in his stilted oratory, was making small talk about what had happened to him that week. I was in no mood for that. In a more exalted state, I wanted a less guarded exchange on subjects more profound.
Adding the last vegetables to the pot, I tried, several times, to steer our talk to a more transcendental line, without success. Adding herbs to the pot, I told him that in honor of Shabbat, I preferred to speak of things spiritual. He resisted. Adding curry paste to our dinner and leaving it to simmer, we moved to the dining room table, lit the candles, began the short ceremony and the evening came into focus.
Things moved along quite swimmingly. The songs were festive; he knew the words. The curry was just spicy enough; sometimes I am excessive. There was a lot of laughter, repartee and shared wisdom at the table. If not quite wild, the atmosphere was adventurous. If you are going to get ecstatic, the Friday night Shabbat table is a good place to do it. Mysticism is rapturous, no?
After dessert, I walked him to the Ancha and we said our goodbyes. Several days later, surprised that I had not heard from him, I sent him a message:
