water, fire, colours, and numbers

"The eye of a human being is a microscope,
which makes the world seem bigger than it really is."
[Kahlil Gibran, "A Handful of Sand on the Shore"]

I had a few pen pals in my late teens.  Having spent a couple of summers in Greenwood, NS as a Staff Cadet, a few of my students, girls with harmless crushes, wrote me after the summers were over.  I was 17 or 18.  They were mostly 13 or 14, but it was nice to be liked, even for the wrong reasons, so I wrote back.  I became a sort of "big brother" to a few of them.  Having been their instructor, they looked up to me as if I somehow had all the answers.  I received a letter one day from one of them, let us call her "Laura", when she was in a little distress.  Laura had come to realize that within her small community, among the few boys her age, she was not exactly considered "a 10".  Now Laura was, in fact, a very pretty young girl, and she was very mentally mature for her age, as well.  She was 14, but clearly had the brain of a 16 year old.  I couldn't help but think she must have had some other hardships at home as well.  When people mature more quickly, it is usually the result of a difficult life.  But while she was a very pretty, she was a little over the "fashionable" weight.  She was still a very attractive girl, but for teenage boys bombarded with images of models, and who somehow think they can and should have one...  well... boys will be boys.  I don't really blame her pathetic, pimply-faced little counterparts.  What did they know of the world?  So she'd come to think she was "a 6".  And she wasn't very happy about it.  Who could be?

At about the same time that I'd gotten this letter, I was having a bit of a dilemma in my life too.  The issue at hand for me was that one of our friends wasn't spending much time with the group anymore.  Didn't he still like us?

And then one night it came to me.  It started in dream, and I sorted it out the next day.  And so I wrote "Laura" back, and shared with her what I'm about to share with you.  I wish I still had the original letter I wrote, but it went out with the trash when I was kicking the shit out of the pack-rat demon a few years back.  What follows is a recreation of a part of that letter.  Obviously, it's been a little too long for me to remember the language I used at the time, and I could probably word it much better now, but I will try as best I can to recreate it the way I created it then.  In any case, the point remains the same.

"Water, Fire, Colors, and Numbers".

"What a quantitative world we live in!  We are surrounded constantly by numbers, and try always to use those numbers to measure everything.  Tests in school, job performance evaluations, 4 star hotels.  Everything is measured in numbers.  Quantity.  What ever happened to quality?  Why do we measure so few things in this way?  Because it takes a little longer to explain?  Why, I ask, do we rate each other numerically rather than more like a movie review, and without that star thing at the end?  I'd like to think of it a little different.

If love is like fire, time is like water.  And people are not numbers, but colors.

Picture a room full of candles and glasses.  You have a pitcher of water and a match.  Each person in your life is both a candle and a glass.  Now love is like fire.  You can light as many candles as you want.  You can use one candle to light the next.  And with each new candle you light, the flame you used to light it does not shrink.  And the more people you love, the brighter your life becomes.  But the water.  There's the trouble.  You must pour out your pitcher into these glasses.  You can fill a glass if you want, or put in just a few drops.  You can empty
your pitcher, or keep some for yourself.  But the water is definitely measurable.  If you've poured it all out and decide you want more in a particular glass, you'll have to take it from another.  You see, there are only some many hours in a day.  And we can only be in one place at a time.  No matter how many people I love, I only have so much time to share amongst them.

People rate each other with numbers as to how "good-looking" someone is.  And it is so wrong.  People are not numbers.  We're colors.  What is your favorite color?  Suppose you said "red".  I say "blue".  Which is better?  What's the best color?  There is no best color.  There are more popular colors.  I imagine if you did a survey of favorite colors, red and blue would come up way more often than black or purple.  But does that make red a better color than purple?  No.  They are both just colors.  Fact is, there are still people whose favorite color is purple.  Why shouldn't there be?  We need all these colors.  Life would simply be way too boring in black and white.  Now suppose it turns out I'm purple.  I simply need to find someone whose favorite color is purple.  Lots of people like purple.  I'm not better or worse than red or blue, just different.  I'm an important part of the wide spectrum that's available out there.  And if you were to do that survey of colors, you would find people saying purple, and orange, and green, and yellow, and black, and so on and so on.  And that's all dating has ever been.  Figuring out what color you are, and then finding someone of your favorite color, who has your color as their favorite color."

I have tried ever since that day, that should I ever describe someone's looks in a negative way, I do not do so as a sweeping generalization.  Rather than saying, "she's not attractive", I try to say, "I don't find her attractive."  The former implies that the lack of attraction between myself and her has only to do with her, and that therefore, no one would find her attractive.  The latter accepts the subjectivity, the "I".  The lack of attraction between myself and her has to do with us both.  "I don't find her attractive... but many other people probably do."  Basically, I try to remember that I'm not saying, "she's a 5", I'm saying "she's not MY favorite color, but she's someone else's."  I don't always succeed.  The vocabulary we use is powerfully conditioned into us by our surroundings.  But I try.  I wish everyone would try.

I've never considered myself a very attractive man.  But then, I've never considered myself ugly either.  I guess I've always thought I'm average,
or perhaps a little under.  But the fact is, I'm just... I don't know, indigo?  Perhaps not that many women would say "indigo", but certainly some do (several have, you might say), and indigo is a very interesting color.

I bumped into "Laura" a couple of years ago.  She's still nice.  She's still pretty.  She's still over the "fashionable" weight.  But right about now, I bet she's making some guy really happy.  Some guy whose favorite color isn't red or blue.  Good luck, "Laura".  Perhaps it was
you who taught me.