I feel like writing an obituary. Or rather it feels like I am writing an obituary. There is the death of something here, and while I might feel like I know what that is, I am very loathe to actually say it.
So you had to get yourself in trouble again. I had offered you an opportunity that would be very helpful to me, and quite helpful to you, but rather than accept it, you had to be “concerned” about something from my end to avoid doing anything that might really help me, and instead embroil yourself into more problems.
It seems that I am the one who needs to be the sceptic, not you. You come my way, my friend, at times that provide you some form of benefit, but whenever the tables look to also provide me some good measure of mutual benefit, you withdraw from the scene, until a situation arises where you could definitely benefit from assistance from me.
So now I have named it, I know what has died. I will no longer be riding to the rescue. No more getting my horse shot from under me to dubious benefit of myself or you, especially when the benefit is more dubious for me than for you.
It pains me to say that, to realize why I must say it, but pain is supposed to teach lessons, and this one I have learned through many painful interactions. Nothing I can say or do, not say or not do, is going to cure your skittishness to actually committing yourself to something beneficial to another party but yourself. I don’t know why, since you have thrown yourself so far into situations to help others, but you always pull out before the final battle, the final commitment.
I don’t want to be the dwarfs from Lewis’s The Last Battle, but I fear you are, or will be if you are not yet, if you don’t learn in time to change.
I think of what we could have accomplished, of what great things you could have done in the time I have known you, and of the suffering your could have prevented or mitigated for me and my family, but your professions aside, you did not care for us enough to actually risk much, and in so doing lost more instead. And me and mine lost much that might have been saved. So It is my turn to withdraw.
You may come by anytime you want to, at least want to and are able to (those niggling detentions in jail do limit one, don’t they?). I will not turn you away, but I will not follow you either.
Perhaps, someday, when you really do something beneficial for me, I might change my mind. But it will take something quite significant, and probably something of long duration, to remove my skepticism. In that, you have taught me very well.
At The Rainbow 