You unwittingly chose a time-honoured metaphor with your diamond comparison. The medieval text I taught about this past semester, the "Annolied", compares the way a person is changed in the course of his life to the way a precious stone is cut and polished. Of course, being a medieval text with religious components, the metaphor gets extended to god as the goldsmith, but still, it is essentially a similar idea.
Anyway... You write:
I'm still mourning because I had to bury my idea of a perfect flat sharing group.
To a certain extent, I can understand that feeling of being sad that a friendship, even a person, did not live up to your expectations - but precisely because I understand it, the only advice I can give you is not to expect too much of others. Of course, you can define what you need in a person you can like, respect or even love, but there is no easy recipe for making certain that you will meet precisely that kind of people. Even people who seem very promising at first glance can turn out to be not what we expected, or can change for the worse.
Oh, and even though this may disappoint you after what you have just said: I have no idea whatsoever of an "ideal self". A much improved self? Why, certainly, yes. But an ideal self is something that is not easily defined, not even as a goal that one will, perhaps, never reach. Defining a truly ideal self would send me brooding for days, as rather too many factors figure into this. I guess that is just to say that I am always careful when it comes to descriptions in absolute terms. ;)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2007-02-15 04:45 pm (UTC)Anyway... You write:
I'm still mourning because I had to bury my idea of a perfect flat sharing group.
To a certain extent, I can understand that feeling of being sad that a friendship, even a person, did not live up to your expectations - but precisely because I understand it, the only advice I can give you is not to expect too much of others. Of course, you can define what you need in a person you can like, respect or even love, but there is no easy recipe for making certain that you will meet precisely that kind of people. Even people who seem very promising at first glance can turn out to be not what we expected, or can change for the worse.
Oh, and even though this may disappoint you after what you have just said: I have no idea whatsoever of an "ideal self". A much improved self? Why, certainly, yes. But an ideal self is something that is not easily defined, not even as a goal that one will, perhaps, never reach. Defining a truly ideal self would send me brooding for days, as rather too many factors figure into this. I guess that is just to say that I am always careful when it comes to descriptions in absolute terms. ;)