Christmas Presence

Today I met an old friend. More accurately, I was summoned, as is our custom. Once in 52 months is a little overwhelming, I must admit. But I do not think we were too fazed.

We spoke about how we met, and what each of our challenges are in the present, where those might come from, and where they might go. We visited places which were once familiar.

My friend appears to be in good health, on a long break between large projects. I am right in the middle of a long project, myself, taking a breather from what fazedness is inherent in the nature of long projects.

News? Only new events, based on familiar patterns we had discussed before. Each of us seeks different things from our respective companions, each of us values set periods of solitary activity, and each of us is currently committed to specific directions with their own opportunity costs. We each have different beliefs about what our time is worth, and we discuss what we have (and have not) obtained from our respective engagements over the recent years past. Each of our bodies fails differently. Each of our minds fails likewise.

Since today's meeting, I have formed a few questions for our next meeting, so I shall write them down.

• How is your health?
• Did you ever give me something, which I did not ask for?
• If you did, which of the commonly discussed reasons did you have, for doing it?
• Did you believe I wanted it?
• Did you not have capability at the time, to tell me it may have been intended for someone else?
• Were you afraid that I would be less useful as a companion, if I did not receive it?
• How are your friendships?
• Have your newest friends served you well?
• What is the market price for friendship these days - what are the acceptable barters, to you, and how do your counterparties react to these terms?
• Costs: Did you form any unexpected perceptions after any transaction?
• Clearly, the demand for my time is low, which is unsurprising. Of the commonly discussed reasons, why is this the case?
• Am I tiresome to read? (From most people I should ask, the answer is probably 'yes'.)
• Do I fail to communicate sufficient appreciation for your time?
• Do we simply meet too infrequently (in general, for logistical reasons), for these conversations to be sufficiently useful?
• How can I improve the quality of service which I deliver in this friendship? (Cursory, but perhaps necessary to eke out an explicit expression.)
• [Insert other hypotheses, and elucidations variously.]

The end, for now.

Update: we had a short exchange on the last day of the year. It feels indeed like another long silence is upon me. It is very familiar, an anxiety that is brought about by the fear of loss, and I often seek to make it constructive by building things - I suppose the built things are distractions, though they have their own merit. A five-year-old business, for example. Within minutes I reflect further and find that the anxiety disappears if I think only of what it means to love, without expectation of reciprocity. Then, a functional peace falls upon me. I wonder what the next five years will bring in various domains of life. As always, I wonder if there will be another conversation.

More questions:

• What is my role in our intermittent conversations?
• I believe the need for that role arises under specific conditions, which we have discussed.
• If that is the case, are there no other roles for me to play, at other times? (Typically in all my social relationships, I focus on the determining the ways in which I am useful - that is enough for me, in general.)
• Is there a pattern to our distance? ~976 days, ~500 days, ~121 days...