Do I really want to be dispensable? I tell myself and everyone else, I want to be dispensable-I harp on it all the time-and yet I have the ugly confrontation with the truth inside my thoughts. Of course, that’s very human of me and not something that readily comes into my mind, but whether I am aware of it or not, it lives very viscerally for me. In my gut, I can’t help but feel I would no longer be necessary. An executive named Jack identified his racket accurately when he said, “I keep telling my people what I want them to do, but in the deep recesses of my mind, I wonder, with a good deal of concern, what would happen if they really did all the things I requested. She can always say to herself, “I could have done more to make that work”-which becomes a handy justification for things staying the way they are. The film producer who never works up to her potential is running a racket. Indeed, a racket can be thought of as the “dark side” of your Winning Strategy, the side that you would rather dismiss from sight, because you don’t want to acknowledge its hold on you. This payoff, the strongest of the three, is directly connected to the “in order to” column of your Winning Strategy. “No, we don’t,” Lend called from the kitchen.įinally, you get to explain the way you are, and justify staying that way. But I’ve had to do a lot of rescuing lately, and those two come in handy.” “You’re working with Reth and Jack? Have you lost your mind?” Raquel collapsed onto the couch and closed her eyes. Arianna smiled tightly at Raquel and left after him. “Admit it: you all adore me.” Jack bowed dramatically as he left the room. And everyone needs a glorified taxi now and then.” “Don’t you remember how he tried to kill you?” which is a rarer and more valuable skill. “Being a nerd who can tap on a keyboard or being able to navigate the dark eternities of the Faerie Paths. “Being a glorified taxi does not make you the bigger hero.” “But your computer prowess wouldn’t have mattered if you couldn’t have gotten into the Center in the first place.” “But here would have been no point to you being there if it hadn’t been for my computer prowess.” I walked into the family room to find Arianna and Jack sitting on the couch, arguing. “Good job! Jack and Arianna got back a couple of minutes ago.” I opened the door and yelled, “Evie alert! Coming into the family room!” She laughed drily, and we walked with our arms around each other to the house. “Well, now that we’re both unemployed fugitives, think of how much time we’ll have to hang out!” She tried to smile, but her eyes filled with tears. With me on your side? Of course things worked out.”
“I honestly never thought I would see the light of day again.” He doesn’t give a damn, for the moment, about Getting Ahead or Needs Must Admiring the Best, the two official criteria in adult friendships, and when the boring stranger appears, he puts out his hand and smiles (not really seeing your face) and speaks your name (which doesn’t really belong to your face), saying, “Well, Jack, damned glad you came, come on in, boy! The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he hasn’t the slightest concern with calculating his interest or your virtue.
It didn’t matter a damn to whom he gave it, for the fact of giving was what mattered, and if you happened to be handy you were automatically endowed with all the appropriate attributes of a friend and forever after your reality is irrelevant. Friendship was something he suddenly discovered and had to give away as a recognition of and payment for the breathlessly opening world which momently divulged itself like a moonflower. What he saw was simply part of the furniture of the wonderful opening world. But he humors the drooling doddering confusion of the universe and continues to address politely that dull stranger by the name which properly belongs to the boy face and to the time when the boy voice called thinly across the late afternoon water or murmured by a campfire at night or in the middle of a crowded street said, “Gee, listen to this–’On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves–’” The Friend of Your Youth is your friend because he does not see you anymore.Īnd perhaps he never saw you. He sees in his mind a face that does not exist anymore, speaks a name – Spike, Bud, Snip, Red, Rusty, Jack, Dave – which belongs to that now nonexistent face but which by some inane doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not happily met and boring stranger. The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you.
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