A letter to a friend

A letter to my friend Pascal

i want to tell you this little story from my life in 1995 when i used to rent out rooms in the appartment i lived in . I had just finished university and i had met up with two new girl  friends through my friend Steven . He worked at the university as a teacher of the English language and he had brought two teachers of English with him Robin and Sarina to my Party.  I was celebrating my achievement of a BA degree in English and German Literature.

  That summer i had a 30 year old very blond Danish Hans  who came to stay .... In, the same period i had spent a lot of time with Robin from New York (also 30)  who had just seperated from her Italian husband and she was looking for some one new.  Seeing that they both liked classical music , i sent them out to the cinema and Robin was very interested and worked very hard to get this relationship  going with Hans.  Hans had been very lucky to have come to stay at my place because not only did he get to know Robin through me , but i also found him a job with a friend of mine who needed an IT man Like him.  Leonardo who was Christiana's boy friend had a start up and i asked him if he happened to need an assistant. This is the  way Hans found a job and a rich and brilliant girl friend through me. I lost touch with both but heard later on that they had a child and were together  for a  long time  (we fell out because she thought i was a looser and not getting a career and not moving ahead with my life) . Robin was a career woman and communist . She had  money  too .  She came to visit me some time after her introduction to Hans and said that it had now become official .... but not only did she not thank me but  she told me rather harshly  to "grow up" .... !

I just wanted to tell you that i never did "grow up ".... i think i would do the same thing again and again if i thought it would make people live better and be and act positive .....but of course our friendship was then invested in her happiness.  I had seen her go on adventures with a lot of irrelevant people and i felt sorry because i respected her as a person ....  in any case i did say "ouch,! that hurt" and her behavior was unacceptable .....  but people are like that when they think that competition is the only thing that matters ....;

I can understand that you feel very rich in your heart and  at times you cant help being nice and generous and altruistic ....  but the rest of the small people do feel annoyed when they don't understand why you give away the big things , which you may need yourself  (like your time )....  infact Hans could have been a winning ticket for me and i let it go and have no regrets, but i have done that many times .....  I think i was always way ahead of Robin because i wasn't  materialistic..

I am writing this to you about your relationship with your brother because you were saying that he is very close to his son and is now drifting away from being a brother to you....

I  meant to say "grow up " to you in this sense ....  you need to understand that it isn't you who he doesn't accept ..... but his values are different  as always people are individuals each one to himself .......  i didn't say something like this meaning  it in a negative sense because i know you are at a different and a higher level morally speaking , and  am not ungrateful for all the various things you have done for me ....;  you have meant a lot to me .....   and i only wanted to say this in the context of your relationship with your brother , meaning that some times people who are your family  drift away in another direction , even if you have the same upbringing ...... basically there is a choice they are  making .  I have had this thing happen in my family where my mother loved her brothers and sisters more than her children and she would let us know it too .... she was very cold that way, but she gave us a lot of great warm hugs when we were kids .....; which have had a lasting effect ! 

Her attitude was one of the main reasons why i left home at eighteen and was happy to be far away from her.  She loved the people who she had grown up with, and  they didn't love her back because they had their own children who took first priority ..... right till her last days she felt she was part of her old family..    

In this case i want to say what a mother told her son on her death bed .... she told him not to invest his love in her but to  "go love the whole world" .... because there is so much need for people who "care" ....  i must say i dont understand why you feel so much about the prisoners you are spending your time with ..... who can ever give back what they have taken away from their victim ?  I cant feel compassion fo'r such people ....  and my religion has a different attitude as you know .....  but it is true that people change and grow ....  what we all need is to have some one who listens and makes us understand what we are doing wrong ... a friend who shows us the way out of certain situations  and perhaps that is exactly what you are doing for other people.