Some of my newfound realizations are things that only I would understand but among the other things that I realized or was reminded of today was how telling our body language can be when we're unaware of being watched. It’s also been interesting to see how lately certain lines from Church hymns seem to come to life. And I have come away with a greater appreciation for the effort that I need to put forth in finding a good girl to marry; extra emphasis on the good, not the hot, the rich, or the popular. Been there done that, dated a Swedish national figure skating champion lol.
But I digress. I have a few buddies here but deep trusting friendships seem to be elusive to me, both here and for life in general. Here we generally only know each other by nicknames, first-names, call-signs, etc. A few of my buddies I only know as Ski, Snowball, Macho, Mr. James, and of course I’m simply Pete to everyone. I think that we enjoy the relative anonymity of each other’s company here because it enables us to serve as each other’s sounding boards for the fears, frustrations, or hopes that we normally wouldn’t be comfortable sharing with our “normal” friends and nobody has a wife here. It’s just easier to share things with a stranger sometimes.
One of my buddies here has been struggling with a bitter divorce and I could tell from things he had mentioned before that it has taken a lot out of him. Even behind the mask of bravado and humor that we men tend to put up, it is apparent that someone has ripped this guy’s heart out, gnawed on it, and carelessly tossed it aside. And today in my office my mp3 player was playing as usual and my buddy sat slumped in a chair staring off through the open door into the distance, seemingly lost in thought. Then a particularly sad country song about love gone wrong and the resulting heartache started playing and his face gradually took on the saddest look I have ever seen on a man. The song was obviously familiar to him and seemed to be a catalyst that brought his misery to the surface for a brief few minutes of remembered, distant pain.
It is kind of difficult to describe but empathy is a powerful emotion that isn’t just reserved for girls. Of course I couldn’t help but think about the pain of love lost myself but more than that, it made me more aware that he might be a person who needs a helping hand now and then. I dunno, mushy dude-stuff really isn’t my style so I’m kind of at a loss for how to describe it but I felt real honest sorrow for this poor guy and for the awful things that this girl back home was putting him through.
One of my all-time favorite hymns reads in part:
...In the quiet heart is hidden, sorrow that the eyes can’t see...
This all sounds very corny but only because my inability to adequately express what I'm feeling makes it so. And I only write this here because I’d get a writer’s cramp from hell trying to write it in my journal, that and the internet is still relatively anonymous…isn’t it?
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