Friendship
"You're wondering if you are fated to preside over the decline?"
"I am. And you know why? What becomes of my friends? Do I not have a duty to keep things together for their sake, for your sake? What holds us together other than the enterprise in which we are engaged, the things over which I happen to preside?"
"Friend, you can only see things from your own vantage point. Your friends, and I, while we share much of your view, can see things that you cannot, things your position does not allow you to see - just as you can see things we cannot because we are not at your elevation."
"You're just saying that."
"I am just saying that - and I am speaking truth. Look, we all have to take each other on trust, on faith at times."
"I thought you only take things on knowledge."
"As far as that is possible, yes. But I have the firm knowledge that I trust you, that I have faith in you. Your other friends, I know, do, too."
"Then you expect me to fly blind into the future?"
"Now why do you say that? Your friends make excellent lookouts."
"And when the signs come that disaster approaches?"
"Perhaps," Director said evenly, "what looms as disaster looks different upon closer view."
"What is disaster for some is not so for others?"
"Yes, something like that."
"Why 'something like'?"
"Because I'm not sure if what someone believes to be a disaster is actually not disaster in fact. In other words, if someone approaches the looming thinking it to be disaster, but when he gets there, to his relief, he discovers it is not, then it is not disaster. But someone who approaches in the same way, and when he gets there thinks something to be a disaster that need not be so, well, then it seems it may well be disaster in fact for him."
"But how could you possibly know whether something 'need not be' disaster for someone else."
"Yes, that's the problem," Director said with a faint smile. "That's why I say 'something like'."
"Is this the mark of friendship, then? Those who see something the same way - disaster or not - are friends, with those taking the true view being good friends and those who see things falsely being bad friends?"
"That's not a bad way to look at it, I think - provisionally, of course."
"Of course."
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Nick Pappas, pappasnick.typepad.com
