A better person

Everyone in life should struggle to become a better person, or at least this is what the moral precepts teach us. This endeavor is not at all times a successful one. And that is because in the human psyche one can find embedded the conception that we, as individuals, are pretty much as good as it can get, leaving not that much to improve.

One of the social conventions require us not to boast, and naturally, whatever we say is not necessarily true.

But from time to time, indiscernible to our perception, someone truly desires to become a better person.

And here I am, indiscernible to the rest of the world, wanting to become a better person. What would I like to improve then? Well, let's start with forgiving abilities.

I would really like to be able to forgive easily than I do. Fairness is very important to me, and I find forgiving the first time not that baffling. But, as it always happens, people err repeatedly - me included, I have no illusion of myself being perfect. The part I would like to improve concerns forgiving AFTER having already forgiven once.

I do sound elusive, in more than one sense, and I will try to clarify this further.

I am known for writing long letters and e-mails. This is because I like to keep in touch with people who are not within physical reach and because often I express myself better in writing, since I can refine the wording to make it less blunt or awkward as it comes out when I speak. What I would like to focus my attention on now is not the writing part, but the keeping in touch part.

I do not have many friends, but those I have, I want to keep in touch with them. And this means a two way communication. To my disappointment I have found myself in the position where I was the only one trying to maintain a friendship, while the others were too busy doing anything else but replying my attempts to, well, keep in touch. I do not mind being ignored, I do not need attention from everybody, but from a selected few. I enjoy being left to my own devices by everyone else, but I demand the modicum of attention from my friends.

Despite my being quite straightforward in all dealings in my life, I somehow not managed to make myself understood in this respect by a some dear friends.

One of them proved to be a very important disappointment for me, first because I thought we really connected and that our friendship was able to stand the test of distance, and second because we became friends later in my life, when I thought of myself as being much learned and capable of 'reading' people. To my surprise, she stopped writing and never attempted to get back in touch. I sent her an invitation on Facebook, but truly unintentional, since I sent an invite to my entire address book - I know, silly mistake, I sent invites to everyone I ever wrote to, including the consulate in Lyon and in Munich, the doctor and the cosmetician! Embarrassing indeed... Aaanyway, she is now among my friends on FB, but apart from sending me silly applications, she never sent me a WORD. Sad, isn't it?

Now, I realise that the more time passes (it has been more than a year and a half), the more things get simpler and the way to go back to a common ground is getting less reachable.

I would like to be a better person than I am now and be able to get back to being friends with this lady. I just can't and I do not know how could I possible do this.

But I already start to babble and this is not a wise thing. Perhaps I should concentrate on improving that as well...

I realise we humans are flawed and that perhaps this is what makes us interesting and worth the attention in general, but how can one tell if something in oneself can be improved or it is just so definitive that it would be easier to change spots on a leopard?

I wish I were better. But not really a Mighty, Mighty Man :-)



Yep, hubby is back to playing Fallout. Great game indeed.

Dogs

I have always been more impressed and touched by sad stories involving dogs than by the ones involving humans. This is not a proof of my misanthropy, but one of my very soft spot for dogs. I love them. I think highly of any and every dog, which is certainly not a thing I can say about humans.

I have found this translation of Esenin's very touching poem about a bitch. (By the way, humans can transform even nice concepts into insults, can't they?!) Esenin knows how to really break a heart. Why everybody is disconsidering the Russians, I could never tell. They can reach depths of soul unknown and unsuspected before.

The reason I looked for this poem is because hubby told me about a doggie that seemed lost the other day in the S-bahn tunnel. It was a black poodle and had no tag and was looking disoriented, left and right, just like a human trying to recognise familiar places. It is said that it is a mistake to treat animals as human with feelings and the rest of the paraphernalia, but I am very against this stupid idea. First of all, I think animals do have feelings. Second, the humans are in general idiots and cannot be bothered to think for a second longer about anything else than their poor simple existence, so really, "popular" beliefs are not reliable source of wisdom. (Very few escape the mould of selfishness and end up altruistic, but this is rather an exception than a rule.) They should be so lucky to have the loyalty and unconditional love some animals prove for their masters, despite the despicable behaviour of the latter. Aaanyway...

I hope the poor poodle found his way back home and he is no longer out in the cold and snow.

I love dogs. I wish I could help them all have a good life and be taken care of. I wish I could make them feel loved. They do deserve a lot more than they actually get.
I hope the weather gets better soon, it seems the cold and gray affects a bit my mood.

NB - the translation is not exactly the best ever. I think the Romanian one was better. Oh, well...