Interest

Do you sometimes feel like even your personal life is like a business transaction, where communication is pushed back and forth until you come to an agreement, a conclusion, a meeting.  Do you sometimes feel like you can't pretend anymore, to smile as though your smile were coming from your heart?  Why put up the facade, so that you keep good relations?  And to what end?  For what purpose?  After all, not every one you communicate with is a potential marriage partner.  You might be married already.  So why is it that some people are so easy to talk to while others are like machines that won't show any human emotion or weakness, making it impossible to find comfort and warmth in their presence, despite their best effort to exude warmth and kindness?  

Aren't you tired yet?  Tired of all the meetings, whether with friends or colleagues?  Tired of the pleasures of life, the pleasantries rather?  Perhaps if you feel this way, you can be pretty assured they are not your friends but somebody else's.  Because having friends over or seeing friends somewhere for dinner is wonderful.  It never seems like a waste of time, but rather a meeting of minds, or an exchange of ideas.  You know it will be interesting.  And if you are not looking forward to spending an evening with people, the likelihood is that you have neither an interest in their lives nor in broadening your own life expectancies.  Not that I want to push you down and make you feel bad, but just letting you know there is great discomfort in meeting with a bunch of strangers.  It is intimidating, and therefore not something you might desire for yourself.  Does that mean you won't go, or does that mean, you must go?  

If you are tired, tired of showing appreciation, of thanksgiving, it means that you are receiving materialistically but not spiritually.  It means that either your mind is not being fed, or your spirit is not being fed, the latter of far worse consequence than the former.  

In a day and in a world where exposure of feelings is disallowed, it is indeed almost impossible to be who you really are, to express that which lies deep inside, and mostly those things are feelings.  Even gut feelings.  You have demonstrated a lack of mercy out of mere exasperation.  But your greatest suffering lies in the fact that your sincere interest is in feelings, and it is this very element of life which has been banished from social etiquette.  

We are to be considerate towards others, but never discuss our feelings.  We are not to reveal how we really feel. For such things are foolishness.  And in so doing - feeling without ever expressing such a feeling - we are repressing these feelings until they either eat us up inside or build up until we explode.  What choice is left us?  

If I were to consider my current predicament of befriending those in whom I deep down actually have little interest in as persons for their lack of personality or show thereof, I would consider deeply the scripture that prescribes loving my neighbor as myself, and still I find myself perplexed.  How did it come to pass that I should spend time with those that seem so far removed from all that is important to me - the matters of the heart, and issues of the soul, and the openness to express our humanity.  It is this that interests me but which is withheld despite the time we have invested.  

If I had it all, and I didn't realise I was empty, so devastatingly empty, what would I do?  Reach out and hope that love will be returned?  Reach out and try to see the deep, the miracles, the mysterious?  What makes a person interesting?  Who is an example of a really interesting person, and what makes him so?  Is it his vast knowledge of subject matters, the unique tone of voice and facial expressions he uses, especially when telling a story, his looks, his achievements, or is it a gift?  Or, more simply, is being interesting a matter of being open and honest about what you think and how you feel, and a matter of expressing it in such a way that the spiritual eye can visualise something beyond the realm of sight?