You’ve cared for it, you’ve babied it, you’ve glued it back together a few times, you’ve limped it along, blown the dust out, wiggled and jiggled it back to workingness, and as it went south, prodded ever more carelessly hoping to get back any response, any sign of life, and ultimately, watched it go up in a little puff of dark smoke. Now you’re coming to terms with the fact that your favorite piece of kit is no more. Now it’s an organ donor; maybe you’ll just leave it on the curbside, or maybe you’ll try to salvage what you can.
I guess the same could be said sometimes for interpersonal relationships, fragile little things that they are. When one fails, as they sometimes do, I have this bad habit of looking at it in terms of preconditions/postconditions: the net result of this association having existed. It’s a hard thing to define: it often leaves knowledge, and an unquantifiable set of memories. But knowledge is all too often meaningless without an application, and memories are just whisper dolls floating on an acid canvas, falling away at the speed of forget. Ten years out, 90% of anything not logged is lost. Is it wrong to think of a former friendship or et cetera, when it’s unrecoverably gone and it just doesn’t matter anymore, in terms of what you’re able to salvage from it, what good, if any, came of it, and/or what tangible evidence of its existence is left over at the end?
Maybe I should try not to think that way, because it’s a real kick in the nuts to realize that after so much time and effort expended, when all is said and done, you have not much to show for it after all.
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