Agape Misjudged

In the past when people acted displeased with me, I tended to try to ask them and find out why they were apparently unhappy with me. This tended to backfire, sometimes quite nastily. Consequently, nowadays when someone mysteriously (to me) becomes unhappy with me, I typically leave it alone. There are some exceptions, but it's on a case by case basis and my general rule is to just give the people space.

Space for someone to be who they are and work out their own experience in life is a gift, I think and perhaps one that's not given often enough. I do not mean ignoring people of course, or being aloof to them. The Ancient Greek word for love of one's neighbor is called agape and it's this that I have tried to realize.

However, yesterday I realized that what I thought was polite and caring is perhaps misunderstood by most people to be exactly what I didn't want it to be: aloof and snubbing, and naturally this made me a little upset because I might be unintentionally telling people I don't care about them, when in reality it was precisely the opposite.

When this person told me about how I'd been, I realized that not only had I been giving off the exact opposites of my sentiments, but that there was some merit in what she said.

For one thing, people have sometimes said I'm cold, mostly in the fact that I don't smile a lot. It's true that I'm not a big smiler, but I do hold a lot of people in my heart, some who probably don't realize it. Most of us can say this. I do come off as a bit abrupt sometimes, but after years of looking at it, this might just be a personality trait, like how some people are silly or more intense or fond of a certain brand of humor. I think I've become a bit softer over time (and I'm still young) but that's simply a quality I have; nothing is intended to be implied by it.

Frequently when people acted upset around me, my usual default setting is that I must have done something to upset them, or they didn't like me for some reason. As everyone wants to be liked, my coping method for the age-old "Why don't they like me?" has been to simply leave them be and let life continue. I don't think this is a bad plan but I finally saw a flaw so simple that I overlooked it for a long time: I really have no idea what people are going through and whether or not I did anything at all to them.

As a person with rather absorbent skin, every cutting remark or poor reaction sinks in and becomes hard for me to shake. Often I hope I'll eventually grow out of them or forget them somehow. Along the path of life I fell into meditation practices which I previously never felt drawn to. But life has a mind of its own and through a kind of meditation I've found myself less and less bothered by things. Reactions can still sting, but the hook doesn't go as deep and I don't dwell on other people's comments or actions as much as I used to. Interestingly, I find myself spontaneously being more smiley, as well.

:-)

This is also a sense of space, but in this case, giving myself a sense of space rather than letting than trying to examine and pick at everything in the mind.

I'll continue to give people their space, but I'll try to remember that perhaps I've simply misjudged them. If what I've done has been interpreted as rude or aloof, then certainly another approach is needed.

But to anyone reading this who thought I was snubbing them or somehow rude, this is my apology. It was only a misunderstanding; it was never my intent to insult you, and I'm sorry if I gave you that impression.

Most sincerely,
Tristan

On Czech and Moving

Dear Readers,

I recently got off of the bus to go to work and the bus driver spoke to me. I don't know what he told me, so I had to make the the monologue up in my head.

"Please help me, I'm frightened of oranges."
"Last night I dreamt the color blue was attacking me."
"I find skeleton keys rather offensive."

Pretending to understand is quite useful, and often as long as you don't open your mouth or at least execute a well pronounced greeting or acknowledgement, the illusion of appearing to be a native speaker, or at least someone well versed in the Slavic tongue, is carried out perfectly or nearly so.

A friend of mine and I both decided to get a tea at 10.30 in the pm, but open entering a building with a blazing neon "Open" (in English) sign, we were informed the building was in fact closed. A few buildings down we saw a lit up pub. Thus deciding that my tea would have to be slightly colder and slightly more alcoholic than I originally had in mind, I suggested we proceed inwards and onwards.

Once in, the bartender came to us and let off a string of Czech that neither of us comprehended. Taking my best guess I assumed he probably said they were going to close soon, so I simply made as if I were weighing what he just said and then asked for a beer. Since his reaction gave no indication that I had misfired and that he had something along the lines of "Jumping Jesus, how many people will we have to turn away at this late hour? Can't they read the sign?" he simply asked my friend if she wanted one too.

Czech is by far the most difficult language I have ever studied in my life.

I say this with a caveat though: Kaqchikel and Coptic are probably more difficult, but I never got very in-depth with either of those.

Made most difficult is that it's hard to find people to speak with. This might seems strange, and it rather is actually, but often people just want to speak English and it's easy to lose sight of why I came here. Nevertheless, I've started reading "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown in Czech. I do so by lugging around both the Czech and English versions of the book and reading them side-by-side. I chose this book because I like the story and am already familiar with it, the language isn't too difficult (unlike reading an older or classical piece of literature). I've decided that the Czech grammar is too difficult to take on by itself. I need more context and I need to get used to the language, to wade into it instead of just trying to memorize it. If it goes well, I expect I'll be using this for other languages.

Teaching is getting better and better. I make mistakes all the time, but it's helping me get better for following classes, especially when I recycle lessons, which I am doing more and more of since a) I get better at teaching the material and b) there's not always time to prepare fresh material. Teaching is not nearly as scary as I thought it would be, but I need to get private students and I'm not exactly sure how to go about doing that. My living expenses are few, but they are very real.

And finally, I moved flats. I am now in the city instead of just looking at it from a window far, far away. We'll see how I'll adjust, but so far so good. One thing that surprised me is there are far more tourists here where I live now than where I lived out yonder in the cut. It should have come as null surprise, but for some oddball reason I didn't even think about it.

The flat doesn't have an oven which really made me hesitate. I'm not much of a baker, but ovens do help with the cooking I do, such as a nice dead chicken or something like that. But we'll see how I manage. It might be the universe's way of weening me off of frozen pizzas that I so enjoy.

Anyway, no special or profound message tonight. Just an update.

Kindly,
Tristan Foy