No more consolation

“No more consolation, no more aggravation, no more I’m making changes for everyone…”

The thing I’m going to write about now is not a thing that happens to me for the first time. No, in fact it is not even the second or the third time that I make this very same mistake… and I know I should stand up and close this chapter here and now. “No more consolation, no more aggravation, no more I’m making changes for everyone…”

The letter I have received today is the natural consquence of the events, I’ve already known that I would eventuallly receive something similar some time in the future, just didn’t know when exactly. I used to study psychology for years, and this kind of behaviour is totally predictable and natural in these situations. It doesn’t particularly strike me, but it definitely makes me feel bad and sad.

As you know I’ve been into writing letters (snail mail) ever since I can remember, that’s how I got to know Sárka, Szonja, Zuzie and Hanna as well (and at least a hundred people on my friends list here on myspace, too). There was a little 15 year-old girl who once wrote to me, called Dalma. I distinctly remembered her sister from parties but never actually met her as she lived in another town and did not go out. A week after her first letter and without me ever replying her, she sent me another letter, this time with a big box of gifts (!). Her letter was warm, enthusiastic and very-very confused. I could barely make out her problems in the flow of mixed-up emotions, let alone her grammatical and spelling mistakes. She talked about hurting herself physically on purpose and her dreams to rule the world and then the possibility of killing herself… then, all of a sudden, in the middle of a sentence she changed the topic and switched to her boy-hunting experiences. Sometimes she told me she was a virgin, then a few letters later she already talked about herself as if she was a filthy whore who sleeps with anybody who offers her a piece of bread. And yes, those letters kept coming, once every week… and at a certain point, something made me think that I should send her reply once she laid my trust in me, without the two of us having any contact with each other, ever.

I naively thought that my short letters (in which I try to give her advice) and my small gifts (just cds and books) might help her feel better a bit or at least cheer her up. Soon I realized that she had a quarrel with pretty much everybody from the deco scene, mainly for various childish reasons, of course. She didn’t spare any time to send out hate letters to people she didn’t like for one reason or the other, but it became pretty obvious to me after a while that she was not “evil” (unlike she preferred to refer to herself), just a confused, screwed-up kid with a number of mental problems.     

Every time she wrote to me, she used up at least 50 pages and sent me bulk packages with gifts. I couldn’t do much with these things because I’m not in the need for charity; when I get something the reason why it makes me happy is because I get it from a friend and not because I couldn’t afford getting myself a goddamn gel pen or a Hello Kitty stationary. 

The last time she wrote to me, she sent me about twenty cds, telling me to download music for her. OK, I downloaded some stuff for her as it really isn’t a big deal for me, I’d do it for anyone, really. However, three of her cds got damaged during the delivery and most of the covers broke of course (imagine she sent me the cds with the plastic cover in the envelope, have you ever heard of anything similar???). What could I do, I just used up my own cds, it’s not a big deal, especially considering that I barely use cds anymore now that I have the mp3 player. The thing is that I do not buy plastic cover for the cds, so I just gave her the cds in papercovers along with a book she wanted to obtain when we eventually met in December at the Crüx-gig.

Now, the highlight is that today, 1.5 months after the events, I got a lovely hate-letter from her in which she enlightens me that I stole her wonderful quality cds and probably sold them somewhere (lol), that I didn’t spend every single minute with her at the Crüx-gig (she was with me all the way through but I had many of my other friends there, obviously), moreover I did not go to pick her up in Budapest at the railway station (precisely because SHE missed her train and could only leave in the evening and by that time I was supposed to be at the venue to make the interview with the band, hah), and that I’m “so full of myself” that I sent her a book she does not like because it is “primitive” (she was the one flattering about that particular book a few months before and it took me a while to get it). Then, another important problem of hers was that I never wrote her long letters and then I usually wrote about “nothing” anyway.

Well, what can I say? I’m not a naive kid and I’m very well aware of the fact that this kind of behaviour was the exact thing I chould have expected from her, but now I really have no clue what to do. Shall I just ignore her and forget about it all or shall I write her a short letter in which I try to explain that she will never ever be able to win people’s friendship with gifts and writing hundreds of pages about herself, but to make a friend you have communicate with the other person… You have to tame them. Without her ever taming me, of course her letters meant nothing to me, her gifts left me empty and her poems left me cold. We never shared anything with each other, the relationship was not symmetric, we had nothing to talk about. No common field of interest, no mutual desire to share thoughts.

If I send books or cds to a real friend or somebody I feel close to, it’s not because I’m stalking them or want them to share my taste in books or music and give up their individuality. The reason why I do that is because I want to share my world with them, show them what I like or find interesting and I love it when they do the same. I feel honoured when Zuzie sends me a cd with Jamiroqui on it even though the music is not my top favourite, but I know that it means a lot to her and she wants to share that special feeling with me. Get the point? 

Without this special bond, there is no friendship, no meaningful human relationship. It takes two equal persons though. So no more charity friendships. “No more consultation, no more aggravation, no more I’m making changes for everyone.”

And for those of you who still have a few extra minutes left, please re-read the passage from The Little Prince and think it over in a new light:   

“who are you?” asked the little prince, and added,

“You are very pretty to look at.”

“I am a fox”, the fox said.

“Come and play with me,”
proposed the little prince, “I am so unhappy.”

“I cannot play with you,” the fox said,
“I am not tamed.”

“Ah please excuse me,”said the little prince.
But after some thought, he added:
“what does that mean—’tame’?”

“you do not live here,” said the fox,
“what is it you are looking for?”

“I am looking for men,” said the little prince.
“What does that mean—tame?”

“Men,”said the fox,
“they have guns, and they hunt.
It is very disturbing.
They also raise chickens.
These are their only interests.
Are you looking for chickens?”

“No,” said the little prince.
“I am looking for friends.
What does that mean—tame?”

“It is an act too often neglected,”
said the fox.
“It means to establish ties.”

“To establish ties?”

“Just that,” said the fox.
“to me, you are still nothing more than
a little boy who is just like
a hundred thousand other little boys.
And I have no need of you.
And you, on your part, have no need of me.
To you I am nothing more
than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes.
But if you tame me, then we shall need each other.
To me, you will be unique in all the world.
To you, I shall be unique in all the world. . .”

“I am beginning to understand,”
said the little prince.

“There is a flower. . .I think she has tamed me. . .”

“It is possible,” said the fox.

“On earth one sees all sorts of things.”

“Oh but this is not on the earth!”
said the little prince.

The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.
“On another planet?”

“Yes”

“Are there hunters on that planet?”

“No”

“Ah that’s interesting! Are there chickens?”

“No”

“Nothing is perfect,” sighed the fox.
But he came back to his idea.
“My life is very monotonous,” he said.
“I hunt chickens; men hunt me.
All chickens are just alike,
and all the men are just alike.
And in consequence, I am a little bored.
But if you tame me,
it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life.
I shall know the sound of a step that will be
different from all the others.
Other steps send me hurrying back
underneath the ground.
Yours will call me, like music out of my burrow.
And then look:
you see the grain-fields down yonder?
I do not eat bread.
Wheat is of no use to me.
The wheat fields have nothing to say to me.
And that is sad.
But you have hair that is the color of gold.
Think how wonderful that will be
when you have tamed me!
The grain, which is also golden,
will bring me back the thought of you.
And I shall love to listen
to the wind in the wheat. . .”

The fox gazed at the little prince,
for a long time.
“Please—tame me!” he said.

“I want to, very much,” the little prince replied.
“But I have not much time.
I have friends to discover,
and a great many things to understand.”

“One only understands the things that one tames,”
said the fox.
” Men have no more time to understand anything.
They buy things all ready made at the shops.
But there is no shop anywhere
where one can buy friendship,
and so men have no friends any more.
If you want a friend, tame me. . .”

“What must I do, to tame you?
asked the little prince.

“You must be very patient,” replied the fox.
First you will sit down
at a little distance from me
-like that-in the grass.
I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye,
and you will say nothing.
Words are the source of misunderstandings.
But you will sit a little closer to me,
every day…”

The next day the little prince came back.

“It would have been better to come back
at the same hour,” said the fox.
“If for example, you came at four o’clock
in the afternoon,
then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy.
I shall feel happier and happier
as the hour advances.
At four o’clock,
I shall be worrying and jumping about.
I shall show you how happy I am!
But if you come at just any time,
I shall never know at what hour
my heart is ready to greet you. . .
One must observe the proper rites. . .”

“What is a rite?” asked the little prince.

“Those also are actions too often neglected,”
said the fox.
“they are what make one day
different from other days,
one hour different from other hours.
There is a rite, for example, among my hunters.
Every Thursday they danse with the village girls.
So Thursday is a wonderful day for me!
I can take a walk as far as the vineyards.
But if the hunters danced at just any time,
every day would be like
every other day,
and I should never have any vacation at all.”

So the little prince tamed the fox.
And when the hour of his departure drew near—

“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”

“It is your own fault,” said the little prince.
“I never wished you any sort of harm;
but you wanted me to tame you. . .”

“Yes that is so”, said the fox.

“But now you are going to cry!”
said the little prince.

“Yes that is so” said the fox.

“Then it has done you no good at all!”

“It has done me good,” said the fox,
“because of the color of the wheat fields.”
And then he added:
“go and look again at the roses.
You will understand now
that yours is unique in all the world.
Then come back to say goodbye to me,
and I will make you a present of a secret.”

The little prince went away,
to look again at the roses.
“You are not at all like my rose,” he said.
“As yet you are nothing.
No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one.
You are like my fox when I first knew him.
He was only a fox
like a hundred thousand other foxes.
But I have made a friend,
and now he is unique in all the world.”
And the roses were very much embarrassed.
“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on.
“One could not die for you.
To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think
that my rose looked just like you
–the rose that belongs to me.
But in herself alone she is more important
than all the hundreds of you
other roses: because it is she that I have watered;
because it is she
that I have put under the glass globe;
because it is for her
that I have killed the caterpillars
(except the two or three we saved
to become butterflies);
because it is she that I have listened to,
when she grumbled,
or boasted,
or even sometimes when she said nothing.
Because she is MY rose.”

And he went back to meet the fox.
“Goodbye” he said.

“Goodbye,” said the fox.
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,”
the little prince repeated,
so that he would be sure to remember.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose
that makes your rose so important.

“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–
“said the little prince
so he would be sure to remember.

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox.
“But you must not forget it.
You become responsible, forever,
for what you have tamed.
You are responsible for your rose. . .”

“I am responsible for my rose,”
the little prince repeated,
so that he would be sure to remember.

From the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery