9 February 2001

"When you see a man casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return -- it is not against the swine that you feel indignation. It is against the man who valued his pearls so little that he was willing to fling them into the muck. . . ."

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

 

Respect

In response to the events that were responsible for yesterday's journal (entitled Disrespect), Callie sent me an email while I was out on a business call (ironically with all of the players from the previous evening).  It's one of those things that explains why I love her so much.  The ellipses (. . . .) are mine, because I've edited out a few things that aren't directly relevant:

i've been thinking about last night.  it was an ok evening until the end when he mentioned, more or less, that he had more fun things to do.  the food was good, we laughed some.  i don't understand.  would it have really been all that bad to sit another hour and chat with us?  i actually thanked him last night for the meal.  now i wonder why?  i've spent my life getting crumbs from people and trying to find a way to be satisfied with them.  i've never realized just how hungry for substance they've left me.  you've taught me so much about this, and still i find myself just lowering my expectations until there's no way anyone can hurt me or disappoint me.  is that a way to live?  <sigh>  maybe yesterday was just a bad day. 

the worst thing about it is he hurt you.  i thought you were just bothered by the rudeness of it all (as if that weren't bad enough), but i realized this morning just how hurt you were by it. . . .  i feel like telling him that no one gets to treat you like that and get away with it. who gets to be kev's knight in shining armor?  but instead i thanked him for dinner.  i don't know. . . . hopefully you're better about all of this.  i still find myself feeling really sick inside that things ended like that last night. . . .

i wanted dinner to be one of the few bright spots in the day.  it ended up making it worse. more than anything, though, i just want you to be ok.  and happy.  and fulfilled.  you don't deserve the minions attempts to beat you down.  you don't deserve crumbs.  you deserve 16oz. t-bone steaks with all the sugarbusters' trimmings.

What made this email even more powerful is that during lunch of our meeting yesterday, I got to hear this same person in question carry on about what a fine time they had last night after he effectively got rid of us.  It was like someone hit me in the chest with a two-by-four.  I won't try to paper over it -- it hurt (especially after I had concentrated so much on the meeting, which went extraordinarily well, that I was pretty much over the hurt from the night before).  But then I get home after Callie's gone to work to this email.  It made all the difference.  And Randroids among us will chuckle, because immediately after reading it, I thought "casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return."  

But that's not quite right.  I do cast pearls.  Constantly.  But I mostly get back pearls.  The email I've reproduced above is one of those pearls.  I spend my time with people who cast pearls.  Other people are irrelevant to me in any great moral sense.  They can occasionally hurt me -- like yesterday -- but that doesn't make me a martyr.  Rather, in the rare occasions it happens it makes me question my own judgment, and resolve to correct the error in judgment (which is the real lesson of that Rand quote, reproduced above in full).  Relationships with me are an exercise in trading.  I will give people my best in exchange for their best.  I fully expect their best.  Most people in the world aren't up to it.  That's their loss.  But those who are -- they are the basis for great relationships and greater things.  They make it more than worth it.  

Those who aren't?  They really are irrelevant.  They don't get pearls, or porkchops, or crumbs, or anything else from me.  I don't look for their crumbs.  They literally cease to exist.  When they are people who have been intimate, they find themselves purged from my life in any important sense.  It's really quite simple: I don't attempt to trade with thieves, morally or otherwise.  So to answer Callie's email above -- nobody needs to tell anyone how to treat me, or be my "knight in shining armor."  I don't ever want anyone to be COMPELLED or otherwise TOLD how to live up to the standards I expect.  I want people in my life who already live by those standards, and who do not betray them.  And there are quite a few of them.  I have no complaints in that regard.

I mentioned in last night's journal it sucks to be blown off so that one can rush off to spend time with the ex-husband of a friend of a friend.  Well, in the case of the second mention of "friend" in the previous sentence, that would be a person who had been previously purged from my life for a similar act of callousness (a person on the list, even, from this old journal entry).  I guess the company one keeps truly does reflect one's values.  Ironic.  Or fitting, actually.

* * * *

Major changes are coming to the journal.  I have been playing around with Grey Matter, an amazing little free journal/weblog program that is a little like Blogger, but on steroids.  It's a cgi program that resides on my server but is otherwise serves the same function as Blogger: to make updates possible from any web browser, and to eliminate the user having to bother with html editing, ftping, archiving, etc.  It's about 100 times (at least) more customizable than Blogger, and it was super easy to configure the cgi end of things.  I had it running in five minutes, but the problem now is one of design.  I can muck around with the thing to keep the journal's format largely as it is here now (but also taking advantage of some of Grey Matter's cool features), or I can redesign the journal slightly in order to take greater advantage of Grey Matter's unique features and overall structure.  You can probably guess I'm leaning towards the latter.  I hope to be done with it by the end of tomorrow.  I'm looking forward to the END of editing and ftping no less than four files daily in order to update the journal!  If it goes well, I will eventually move the weblog from Blogger to Grey Matter.  

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