Ah, my dear Gruntal. You ask: “If you had a choice would you value a communication from the smartest person or the ‘slowest’ or most culturally distant? Which would be the greatest challenge? The biggest reward?”
I’m not so sure I’m left with a real choice here. Why are you lumping the “slowest” and “the most culturally distant” together? I can hardly think of anyone more culturally distant than Hungarians. I’ve lived here for twelve years now, and I still can’t figure out how these people think, or what motivates them. But they are anything other than slow. Frighteningly bright is more like it. But in a really impractical way. You have a nation that’s full of people like Szilard and Teller and von Neumann, and they can’t make the railroads run on time or even organize a picnic.
I guess a partial answer to your question is that I highly value communication with those who are culturally distant from myself. That’s why I live abroad. I also don’t discount the opinions of someone who hasn’t had a lot of formal education. That’s what mysticism is all about. (This is a mysticism site, after all.) We all have the same Cosmic Intelligence operating deep down underneath all the denser layers. That goes for Samantha, too. (I can just see Samantha reading over your shoulder while you type and thinking to herself, “Who’s he callin’ slow?”
You also say, “Some of the most distant people may only be a heartbeat away.” Ain’t that the unvarnished truth? I’m sittin’ here in Budapest, lookin’ out my office window at various styles of old architecture that you’ve never seen, and I can hear office mates in the hall speaking in foreign tongues, but my mind is focused on a man half the globe away who’s dealing with the contemplations one goes through when packing up a house filled with years’ worth of detritus. Sometimes the latter is more real to me than the former.
It cold here and miserable 'cuz there no heat in house and I want my Samanmtha and where my Thanksgiving feast with double portions of pecan pie ?! I guess this isnt my year to party. Me friend might volunteer giving out dinners at the local "Rescue Mission" to the "slow and culturely distant" meaning skid row bums or worst. I doubt if she talks much to them but that how it goes. She confides in me as I do to her even if I cant talk to our familes about things.
Sometimes family is the hardest ones to talk to. Manners and civillity win out over honesty. You learn to live with someone and get along at the price of sponteanity. You get desparate and do the "beggars banquent" thingie only to discover there are so many souls you have nothing on common with, least of all a shared language. Even the moral underpinning can go haywire: what a waste to even try to convince the world why you act the way you do. They dont get it .....
I am more interesting in tales and what people think is important; or how much they are willing to give or bend: the way they spin these things out betrays their belifes and values. And to briefly touch on the subject of another post here: sometimes you come to a point in your life where you feel duty bound to sacrifice yourself as proof positive of your commitment. And again: some people will never understand this. They are culturely distant to the point of being unreachible. I dont think loyalty is funny.
I hope I can construct the fence in time so Samantha cant get out and get squished by a bus I hope I hope. Even if technically she isnt even me dog.
