Living & Learning My Way To Wisdom


How is it that some people are just terminally rude? For some, it would seem, no amount of kind words, generosity or offer of help is enough to get a reciprocal smile or a courteous amount of honesty in return. Instead, you just get a load of venom and hate, or silence and mental strife; the seemingly scorned versus the passive aggresive. But really, I just don’t get some people.

I was thinking today, I had recently made contact with an old friend. Well I say old, perhaps not that old given my own encroaching wisdom – which for those wondering is what we’re calling midlife now that it is nigh – but certainly a friend of maybe three or four years. And a friend who through reasons that aren’t worth mentioning now, had slipped off my radar and no doubt mine from their’s a couple of years ago.

But after a close encounter which actually turned out to not be as such – I thought I saw them in the street but failed to stop out of hesitancy and chose to email later that evening – I was told I was right to avoid making a fool of myself as it wasn’t this person I thought I had seen. But from this a back-and-forth developed between us. Admittedly, a back-and-forth through that old technology which unto itself is basically obsolete given the so-called immediacy of Twitter, Facebook and the like.

And so, for a couple of weeks, maybe three, we communicated, caught up and shared. I dared to even think that bridges were being mended. Until that is, nothing. Not a peep for over a month. A month I only realised today.

I re-read my last email only to check for some silly but horrendously coincidental typo that may have led to an unintentional but almighty faux pas. But alas if there is one I cannot spot myself. Which only leaves me to think that some people are just rude. Too rude to think that a ‘hey, really busy, can we chat next week’ or a ‘hey, you know what, don’t wanna chat anymore’ is worth their time.

It annoys me that some people are like that. Those who think honesty isn’t valuable, or appreciated even. I guess we are all different, we all have our traits and quirks. But I don’t feel that honesty and integrity are quirks, they are more than that. These qualities are a foundation on which a personality is built and nurtured from.

You live and learn, I suppose. You live and learn.