"Single-serving friend"

If you have seen "fight club", you might still remember what Edward Norton was referring to. Many people (who did not see it) think it is a movie about violence and all the Hollywood stuff, and therefore do not want see it. They are wrong. What I can tell you is that it is the only movie, after seeing which I went to buy the novel (links to the author's entry on Wikipedia, not an ad) of it.

The main character's only "friends" are those he meets on the planes amid his business trips, who he never sees again, -- hence "single serving". I will let you find out what the movie is about. The issue I want to raise is the fact that it becomes increasingly difficult to make close friends as one grows up, at least it is the case for me.

I do not claim I understand why this happens. I can only throw out some guesses. Maybe as we grow up, we also grow a protective cocoon around us, being aware of the risk of interpersonal relationships. Maybe we become so focused on our own agenda that we don't have the time or energy to build friendships. Or maybe our wives keep us from making friends?

Anyway, on the issue of friendship in general, how can we expect Sir Francis Bacon to not have pondered it? See his essay "Of Friendship". But he did not make this observation at all, let alone theorizing it. Maybe it was not a problem in his time.

Why blog

It appears that some people have stumbled into this blog of mine. Does it occur to you that I should at least explain why I started this blog? At any rate, it does to me.

Apparently I am not scribomaniac, not even prolific as a writer. Simply put, no obsession with writing. It might well be just that I am narcissistic. I put down pieces and bits now, and when I read back later, I become euphoric at what a smartie I was. :)

The above was just to make you smile. I am without a doubt narcissistic, just as much as narcissism is omnipresent, and mine is surely within one standard deviation of the mean, on whichever scale of measure.

Einmal ist keinmal

There are so many things in the world one can have. But know that you can get hold of no more than a handful, or two. Then there come the issue of choice, and concomitantly, opportunity cost. And it is the nature of the opportunity cost that it is not normally precisely predictable, even for what might be in the short terms; in the long run, unknowable.

It follows then that we are never given the possibility of evaluating the choices we make in our life, as one will never be able to see what might have become of his or her life if one had made one choice differently. It is not an option to warp into the parallel universes, so to speak, that represent the alternative pathways.

That is what he meant when Milan Kundera said "Einmal ist keinmal". If we can live our life but once, we have not lived. That is because we are never given the opportunity to comprehend it, as we are not capable of comprehending any of the choices or decisions we make.

Quite an astonishing and amusing view, which certainly adds nothing to our wisdom. It says nothing about what is right or good, or otherwise. It is a quite ignorable thing , just like the sex scenes in his book, though people like to talk about it --eh, them, actually.

Coincidence? Or not?

颜若桃李，心如蛇蝎

Look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under it.
- Lady Macbeth

-- 06/19/2009