I often wish I were a more complex man.  In wishing for such a burden it is only my yearning to see and feel things more deeply than I already feel.  Maybe it’s the sophistication that I wish I were able to attain.  Maybe it’s a suave, intellectual-type image that I envision for myself in spite of my perpetually nominal status.

Pipe dreams, some might call these yearnings.  Day dreaming might be another moniker. Head in the clouds its called.  Yet, as screamed by Bastion in the Neverending Story, “I can’t! I have to keep my feet on the ground!!!!!”

I understand that while my lofty superego ambitions are likely to create an unrealistic sense of purpose, my feet on the ground existence creates interactions with my fellow person that I must reckon with as the man I am.

Ergo, I offer this shutter-peak into my cubicle from your assumedly larger office.

Returning home from an exhaustive and rather sickly several days was an admitted relief.  Miles and-then-some of travel weighed heavily upon my nape as some strange malady laid claim to my torso and sinuses.  I was gifted several rented movies, a cool dark comfortable room, and a considerate, and ultimately, very considerate woman with which to act as salve to my ailments.

These were perfect tinctures for my aches.  Yet, innocuously, an interrogative was proposed.

“Do you not have any hot water?”

Admittedly, I hadn’t checked.  After being away for several days, this element hadn’t been of much concern.  How often does one concern themselves with hot water?

Shower? Yes, quite likely this would be a concern.

Washing hands? Ok, this would qualify.

Shaving? Yes, only every few days for me.

Aside from dishes, this doesn’t concern me a lot.  In addition, when my downstairs neighbor controls the heat, this negligent distraction must assuredly be her fault.  So I proposed that we wait until her return, or at least until the next morn, until I act on the matter.

And then I’ve woken early.  I’m half naked, and 200 pushups into my morning workout, when an aggressive knock presents itself on my door and I am forced into donning, at a minimum, gym shorts.

“Do you have any hot-water?”

“Nay” (In actuality, it went “No I haven’t had any since yesterday but I didn’t want to bother our landlord on Memorial Day and thought that you might have some control of it so I thought I might wait until you returned to see if you had anything to do with it”)

“No, I just checked it, and nothing seems to be working.”

“Well, I was going to suffer through a freezing cold shower, and then call our landlord on the way to work.”

“Oh?”

“Yep, I’ll call him on my way.”

“You’re going to call him?’

“Yep, I’ll get ahold of him shortly.”

“Ok, well have a good morning.”

“You too.”

And then, a mere thirty minutes later, I completely forgot about the entire occurrence.

I arrived at work, the responsibilities overcame me and I just didn’t make that call.

Until, around three o’clock, I realized what I should have done and hurried to correct that mistake.  I dialed my landlord and spurted out the problem that should have been communicated hours ago.  I explained that I was going to call him on my way to work and I, just, whiffed.

He retorted with….

“Oh are they at your place to fix it already?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, your neighbor called me a bit ago and told me the whole situation, so I sent someone out.”

And, feeling like the worlds biggest douche, I apologized for bothering him. After a bit of banal banter we broke conference.

I felt horrendous. I gave my word to my neighbor, I would contact our landlord, I would take care of our mutual concern.  In a moment of pathetic forgetfulness I had failed the both of us.  I barely knew her, and our interactions in a matter of two years had the brevity of the flicker of a light bulb, yet I was disappointed.  I wasn’t only disappointed, I was frankly, dejected.

This betrayal consumed me so deeply that when I returned from work, I composed an apologetic note that I placed between her screen door expressing my misgivings at handling the situation poorly.

I felt so deeply that I had disappointed her.  It got into me, it got under my skin.  It bothered me so, to have disappointed her.  And in the same breath, I barely even know her.

How much more deeply could I feel the disregard of a friend, were the situation similarly reversed?

Should you, or I, allow ourselves to be penetrated by feeling discarded, or disposable?

Or, shall we admit, that these are failures of the human race?  That we generate preposterous expectations of how we should be treated and how we expect the world to revolve about ourselves?

In the same day I felt that I had failed another human being, I felt that another failed me.  Is this selfishness?  Or is it a wish to feel redeemed, maybe absolved? Do we continuously do ill, accepting that it will serve it’s karmic retribution upon us?  Or do we do ill, feeling that we will compensate by a magnanimous gesture down the road? Is it then magnanimous if it ends up being self-serving?

Or do we just try to be decent.

And then, do we simply hope that our understanding of decent, applies to those around us?

Humbly yours,

J