Chapter 22

Beyond Reason:

In this chaos which is life I try to pick out threads of reason and meaning.

This is not always easy.

I met a girl a few months ago in Bangtao who I wanted to be with, beyond reason.

A fine madness perhaps. Certainly beyond rationality.

What makes me think of this? Well a mutual friend told me today that she, the girl in question, had got herself a new boy friend.
My immediate reaction of sadness was soon overcome by feelings of happiness for her and I sent her an email saying how happy I was that she had found a man and that I hoped that he was a good person who would make them both happy.

It is interesting, at least to me, that a man of my advancing years can still succumb to the deep, oh so deep feelings associated with love, lust or whatever you like to call it.

It will of course be obvious to the reader that the girl in question does not reciprocate my feelings. Ah me! this has always been a problem through life’s history. Yes of course she likes me and wants me as a friend. But hey who can cope with that? Not me for one.

When one's feelings soar way into the stratosphere, way beyond lust, way beyond love what can one do?

I will tell you. What one does is one fights a desperate coping action.
Some unfortunate people in this situation commit suicide. That is not my way.
To me to be in this situation is to be totally amazed by the human capacity to experience such awesome love, hate, passion, joy and despair all at the same time. It is a time when, perhaps, I feel more in touch with humanity than at any other time. This truly shows me deeply what life is about.

I cannot in all honesty say that this is an enjoyable experience but oh how richly it is felt. To be where I am at this moment is saddening but also it is a time when every petal of every flower is imbued with beauty. When every raindrop contains the world. Oh dear I fear I feel a song or a poem about to erupt.

I remember some years ago sympathising with a lady who was upset because she felt she was the only person in the world who did not have a loving companion and was therefore a failure. I pointed out that there were many people not at that moment in a relationship, and therefore in her predicament and who were, in her view, therefore also failures. I’m not sure this helped her but I think she got the point.

So where does this leave me? Here I am, on my own, probably past my sell-by-date, and with the woman who I can’t even speak to coherently because whenever I am near her my brain goes into tongue-tied manic mode, about to embark on what is probably a sensible alternative course of action. Well I guess I have to pretend to be pleased, no not pretend, I actually am pleased that she appears to be finding a good solution to life’s problems.

Meanwhile I shall continue to be amazed by the capacity of the typical human being to cope with desperate and deeply distressing situations which in my younger years I would have felt were life limiting.

So I guess that makes me a really average human being. This I am not unhappy about. The loss of the lady? Well of course that is a different matter.