Sad truth
My first entry, what can I say? Today was a really slow day for me since I only had one class to attend to. But, it was a philo class, and I’m really glad for that. We were discussing Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet”. Professor Leslie, God bless her soul, decided to spare us from having to go through all ten letters by picking out certain interesting excerpts to discuss - which mostly said “Live your own life; do not let others dictate it for you” in many various twenty-sentence paragraph. There were some, however, which talked about sadness - that we are alone in this world and we have to go through our sadness without help from anyone. I found this rather interesting because its true yet everyone still has this notion that they can get some sort of reprieve in the form of moral support from friends or family members. But thats never really the case because when you get hurt, physically or emotionally (or spiritually?), you bear the full brunt of the pain and nobody can truly symphatize with you on that account.
Which brings us to the famous statement, “Its not you, its me.”, which was officially confirmed by Professor Leslie as one of the most used (and one of the lamest) excuse of all time. I believe it started with:
“for what (you should ask yourself) would a solitude be that was not vast; there is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear, and almost everyone has hours when he would gladly exchange it for any kind of sociability, however trivial or cheap, for the tiniest outward agreement with the first person who comes along, the most unworth.... (Letters to a Young Poet: Letter Six, Rainer Maria Rilke)”
This basically says that sadness cannot be avoided because we are alone in the world (Descartes’ Meditations), and solitude can be helpful in our times of sadness and despair. And then Prof. Leslie started on about her having gone through many break-ups in her life (although she’s only just 32 or somewhere along those lines). Then her friend, who recently ended a 5-year-long relationship with someone, mentioning all these excuses: “I’m sorry, I think we’ve fallen out of love.”, “I don’t know how to say this the right way, but you know how hard it is for me to say that I want to break-up with you”, “Its not you, its me”, etc. So our professor recalls many previous accounts where she’s received this very such line, “Its not you, its me.”, which usually ends up with her having to tell her sob story to the poor janitress in the females comfort room in some place she failed to mention.
Girls; don’t think I’m being too assuming when I say this and guys; don’t even think of denying it but, both sexes use this phrase. If you’ve ever broken-up with someone or gotten shot down by someone you liked, you probably got a line pretty similar to this one. It’ll probably begin with the affirmation that the break-up is “official” wherein the one who breaks the relationship up will tell you a load of crap along with such a line. Or you confess to liking someone and they say they can’t return the feeling, they don’t know how to say it but... “Its not you, its me” and they probably won’t tell you what is it about them that prevents them from feeling the same way or returning the love (or whatever). Which is just pure, right-there, grade-A (pardon the term) bullshit. If you’ve ever gotten this line from someone, you have every right to hate that person for the rest of your life. Its like you’re a letter going into the rejected bin because you have the wrong stamp. We don’t know what stamp is supposed to be on you but its just not the right one so off to the trashbin with you. These people don’t even have the decency to be honest with you; to have to resort to such a cowardly way in order to avoid saying these few simple words, “I’m sorry, I just don’t feel the same way”. So people, be angry but don’t ever regret it because like they said, “Its not you, its me”.
But hey, it doesnt end there. If you did get the honest answer, “I’m sorry, I just don’t feel the same way”, you most probably received the follow-up: “Can we just be friends?”. Its amazing how much pain we cause by asking someone to be friends - don’t you just love how the world works?
Quite the first entry for me since I’ve never ever officially been in a “real relationship” (depends on what you consider real). I’ve had short ones which I had to break-off or avoid starting but for the very considerate reason that it was an international school and we’d all end up in different countries after we graduate so it wouldn’t really be fair. Hate me if you want, but I’m just being honest and I have nothing to hide. A few thoughts would be nice and feel free to swear if you want to, I don’t discriminate.