All Letters

My dear Jil, I present a few nuggets from my letters to you this year. Here they are:

There are what we call invisible losses in life. These are losses we sustain without even being aware. The way life is structured a great deal of the value we derive is hidden in others. Therefore what they think of us matters. Call it social credit.

My dear Jack, I’m not sure you can handle what you’re getting yourself into. Someone needs to advice you. The issues in your relationship are not small – your girlfriend cheats on you, gets drunk, has suicidal tendencies, and it’s a semi long distance relationship. How are you going to cope? Each of these issues is a major in itself not to talk of all four together. How are you going to handle all four at once? Each has the capacity to break any relationship.

My dear Jil, I was talking to a dear friend the other day and she told me as soon as she said “I do” she knew she had made a horrible mistake. That’s a terrible realisation on a wedding day. It’s sad to know that you just signed an agreement that will bring you grief. I wondered how she felt from that moment on, what her expectations were for the marriage. But of course such thoughts are swallowed up by festivities, until the next day when you’re alone with yourself. You wonder what you’ve done. Before that moment the momentum associated with planning a wedding carried her forward. The picking of wedding gown, the design of the cake, the enthusiasm of parents… These things can carry an apprehensive bride to the altar.

My dear Jack, I read your mail, and I sighed deeply. It’s not because the issue is unresolvable but because there are so many dimensions to the issue. It boils down to the question of disclosure – what should a man disclose to his fiancée, and what should a woman disclose to her man before marriage. Some of the things some men insist upon are prurient and unwholesome – things like number of lovers before they met… Of what use is that sort of information? The only right answer such a questioner will be pleased with is “None.” He can’t handle any other answer. There are those with the mentality of Henry VIII King of England. He couldn’t handle the knowledge his wife had a past lover BEFORE THEY MET. Killed the guy. It’s a gory editorial work on sexual history. Some men want to be the first. Unfortunately they get attracted to non-virgins and can’t handle the fact. You can’t reverse history. It’s best to just accept your girlfriend’s sexual history and concentrate on what attracted you to her. You came into her life later than her past.

My dear Jack, let me offer you some words of encouragement this morning. I know things are tough. But if truth be told that is the rite of passage into adulthood.

My dear Jil, I do understand what you’re going through. Better than most. I have a heart seasoned understanding of life that is tempered by experience. It still boils down to you, the decisions you have to make. This is your life, no one else’s. When you find yourself confronted with an unresolvable situation what you need is a decision. An unresolvable situation is something beyond you, something you can’t alter or do anything about; it’s something that lies in the purview of another person. We delude ourselves imagining we can solve humans. Yes, we can solve human problems but no one has yet been able to solve a human.