The Way Things Are

Status Quo:  The state of things; the way things are, as opposed to the way they could be.

I'm heading back to The Old City again.  Apparently I have some more to learn about powerlessness and tolerance and it's not all about me-ness.  While I'm always trying to improve my tolerance skills there's nothing like a dose of family to show me how much further I have to go.  And, you know, I really like where I am right now which makes leaving to go someplace hot and humid less of a draw.

I spent about half of my swim this morning pre-arguing with an old friend from home.  He wasn't there and he was not thinking about me and if, by some miracle, he was thinking about me it wasn't in the context of an aggrieved soul wronged by the world.  This is one of those guys who managed to pick up the pieces of his ruined life after I left town and somehow forge ahead with a happy and productive life.  I don't know how these people do it.  I half-expected a mass suicide when I left town.  How could people even manage to move on after I left?

This guy has never called, emailed, or texted me since I left.  This doesn't make him unusual and I'm not angry or surprised by this behavior.  Most people have continued to live their lives.  I'm the one who left after all.  If one is interested in maintaining a status quo one can't throw the status quo into the wood chipper - The Old City status quo is in The Old City.  This doesn't mean that these relationships aren't real or meaningful, just that they're in a state of suspended animation.  There's a lot of binder in being able to chat about the weather or local politics or why the local baseball team can't seem to hit the ball out of the infield.

Where this dear old friend oversteps a boundary with me is by trying to arrange a meeting when I'm in town while not changing his behavior at all.  So my difficulty is this: if I call him then I'm surely in for a browbeating while not getting to see him and if I don't call him then I'm certainly in for a browbeating for not calling him.

So, you see, I'm kind of screwed.