divorce

The Decline and Fall of Nuance

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Nuance is a great word. It sounds cool, is interesting to spell, fun to say, and it is still shiny from lack of use. Like keeping your new car smell by not driving. Ever. In fact, it’s doubtful you even know what nuance means, and you certainly don’t know where the word came from, do you.*

Nuance. The word comes from “nubes” the Latin word for cloud but then the French got involved and romanticized it into their own word for “shade” or “slight variation”, per Ai. My Ai goes on to add in the lovely English accent I selected: “Think of it as those little, delicate distinctions that can make a big difference.”

Imagine all your conversations so far today. Nuance ever come up? Not just the word but maybe “the little, delicate distinctions”?

It’s doubtful. America learns to read and write and stroke screens but thinking, especially about “little, delicate, distinctions” is an effort left for…who?  Modern dissemination of facts and news has to be condensed into the 3 second (or less) American attention span. Unless it is a kitten, gossip, crepe skin, or has boobs, we don’t linger long enough for nuance. Do we really need it, anyway, that stupid French word?

Aha. Since you’ve made it this far you have decided we do. And you are right. A recent puzzle indicates why: “try to draw a perfect square with three straight lines.” Much like 2 plus 2 equals four unless you’re adding apples and oranges and not caring about the total amount of fruits and want to know…crap. Two plus two always equals four if you add context, or nuance, the little delicate you-know-whats. Eg; If you have two apples and I have two apples, we have four apples between us. If I have two apples, and you have one orange and one pear, we have a great start on a fruit salad, but not four apples.

To draw the perfect square with three straight lines, some add “distinctions”, like using the edge of the paper as the fourth side. An arguably “out of the box” solution but the puzzle itself already supplies the distinctions.** As we review our journey into the Land of Nuance, we learn to ask what does “with three straight lines” mean? If you’re sensitive to nuance, a “meaning” spurts out of this puzzle and longs for you to see it.

So what? We have trouble with a puzzles. Or counting. Big deal. It is a big deal. There is not a problem we face as a country, that is not loaded with so much nuance it’s a wonder we don’t sink into the oceans. All our problems like Wars, the Economy, Immigration, politics, work…all nuance-rich and ready to be emphatically debated, discussed, and solved. Nuance flourishes in trees like low-hanging fruit, on the ground like exposed diamonds, and floats in the very air we breath.

But we ignore it. We stumble over the diamonds, let the fruit rot, and nuance floats off into  space, a twilight zone none of us ever go to.*** Then we try to solve world problems we don’t understand with nuance-deprived solutions that don’t work and we look back later, and wonder why. Finally, we engage in nuance-free discussions about who’s to blame.

If you’re thinking this sounds like a domestic dispute leading up to a divorce, it is. Nuance is missing from our personal lives, too.

Nuance is obsolete. Whose fault is that?

*Added “do you” to avoid the dreadful prepositional ending. Got lazy, sorry. I should have looked for a better sentence structure. It would have been shorter than this explanation.

**Do I need the quotation marks anymore?

***No. Ai says it’s okay, these days. Worrying about prepositional endings is “old fashioned and clunky.”

Personal Issues of Men and Women

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A few days ago I wrote about a personal issue between me and a partner of 21 years.

My sad details are irrelevant but the important part was the “mechanism” of relationships, including how to start them, nurture them, and end them. Obviously my current concern is the end, but let’s not lose sight of The Start. A dating website has discussion groups entitled “Who should make the first move?” and “Should you wait for him to ask the first question?” Hm. As a young man, wondering how to start things never came up: I dove in without regard for personal safety.

Now, in the senior years, many of us are not only unsure of how to make the first move, but also unsure if we should. Are we allowed? Is it proper? These questions can still be answered with the exuberance of youth: Dive right in. Most seniors still won’t, but consider the option: waiting? The object of your interest may die before you get up the nerve.

Nurturing a relationship would take too long to explain and I’m not the best at it, anyway. This last was the longest ever, and it still did not last. We’ll talk nurturing, later.

But The End…in years of my own personal relationships, and those of close friends, The End is never simple, never easy. The Christian concept of forgiveness adds to the problem. Many a female in my past was in relationship characterized by mistreatment but kept forgiving, kept enduring. Is that wrong?

In discussing human problems we allow for the spectrum of human behavior, but in this discussion we will only deal with the “two people who truly love each” other scenario, the one where both–over many years–collect and pile up small injustices until they become a molehill. Eventually, one of the participant’s molehill becomes a mountain and a “switch is flipped”, which cannot be “unflipped”. The one with the flipped switch then needs to exit, to find relief, to find something new, find greener grass. The remaining partner never understands because the remaining partner looks at their molehill and wonders “I put up with theirs, why can’t he/she/them put up with mine?” The defining characteristic of this ending is that both departed and remaining partners think they are right, think they are the victims, and are the aggrieved. The worst case scenario for intelligent, well-meaning people.

Yes, I’ve experienced this, but been there for many others, male and female, when it happened. In reality, neither is really wrong, but friends and family take sides, anyway, and then…well, anything can happen. It doesn’t help to mention to all the “two sides to every story” nugget. It doesn’t help to say time will heal everything, either. With this ending, both sides suffer, and have unresolved questions about why. And sometimes unresolved questions cause irrational acts. Ugh. Again, everyone suffers. And the two actor’s communication falls apart, ending all hope.

Maybe this ending is an American thing. Maybe our rich and powerful drug companies could develop a pill for endings/divorce that wipes out memory and leaves both participants with a clean slate. It would be a moneymaker.

But it is life. Having The End happen is not new, but to have it happen at a senior age is. The “time will heal all wounds” becomes irrelevant. Moot. Much like seniors.

It is still life, but a new kind, an unexplored territory with a definite horizon in the foreseeable future, for both of us.

Time to dive right in.

Man…and Woman…Sigh…

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A close, personal relationship just ended. It’s none of your business, but the mechanics of it might be: why is it so hard for men and women to communicate?

The Men from Mars and Women from Venus trope is tired, but true. A better example is the Black Box from management courses. It says we don’t talk to each other, we talk into a Black Box. And the other person doesn’t hear us, they hear what they take out of the Black Box. Is what is said into the Black Box what is heard FROM the Black Box? Very seldom…very, very, seldom.

My recent, personal issue is a text book example. It will be discussed here, in its simplest form, and you can fill in details, you’ve probably all been through the same thing…at some time.

A plan was designed to protect someone. Said “someone” did not understand The Plan. The Plan had to be implemented at a quicker pace due to The Calamities, and so was undertaken without the complete understanding of the “someone”.

The Plan has worked to (nearly) perfection for the “someone”, which makes the planner really happy.

But, sadly, the “someone” still doesn’t understand, and in fact, thinks less of The Plan now that it worked, than the “someone” did before. And thinks even less of the planner.

It’s an interesting dilemma. There is satisfaction The Plan worked, but sadness for the hatred it caused. It’s time for soul-searching. Time to understand what means most in life. Time to suck it up.

Worst of all, here is the only place to tell the story. Hope you don’t mind a really, personal entry. If anything humorous comes to mind, it may break the gloom of the previous stuff, but don’t count on it. Every time feeling sorry tries to hijack my mind, The Plan, and how good it is for “someone”…pleases me. It’s like a yo-yo.

“What we got here is…a failure to communicate. Some (women) you just can’t reach.”

The lessen learned which might be useless this late in life, is doing the right thing might not make you happy. And write stuff down. Use charts. Bullet points. Hand puppets. Anything to make the decisions in life can be successful…for both. But isn’t divorce/breaking up normally better for one than the other?

Whatever. Remember the Black Box. It’s part of your work life, private life, and news feeds. Kidding about the news feeds…maybe.

And apologies, again, for TMI, but there are others going through the same thing, kind of, maybe.

Life. You gotta love it.

Con Temp Late

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Words are fascinating. How did they come to be? Who decided red meant red? Blue, blue? What was the first word ever uttered? “F$%^” when he/she/them stubbed his/her/them’s toe on a rock? Were his/her/them’s companions mortified at the vulgarity? How would they express it? Club to the head? A new, different word?

Would language and communication end if we all spoke a different language? Because we do, but have just enough understanding of basics to function, and most of those understandings are non-verbal: a smile, laughter, crying, actual physical, Three Stooges-violence. (Why, I otta..soytenly.)

The make up of words is fun to talk about. take the title word: Contemplate. An alien with limited knowledge would break the word down like the title. The noun version of Con (Discussion on “parts of speech” will follow after masters degree is finished) means against, Temp means not permanent, and Plate is something we use to eat our food. So the word means we are temporarily against eating off dinnerware? We are against eating off temporary plates?

Another option would be Con tem plate. We are against tem plates? Not another word.

Contemplate has survived attacks like this for centuries and held on to its accepted meaning: “think profoundly and at length”. But, sadly, in this time-sensitive world we live in the only people who have time to contemplate are the elderly, especially those inexorably (please look it up for its exact meaning) approaching senility. It’s all part of the “aged getting wiser” shtick, a myth which does not take into account bitterness, regret, and–worst of all–reminiscing. They take up so much time.

It’s easy to understand the lack of contemplation in youth, they don’t know shit, but why is contemplation not the norm for the engaged? The unemployed? Those inclined to addiction of any sort? And what about psychopaths? Actually, the latter may be excellent contamplators(sic), just in a twisted, unacceptable way.

It stands to reason(Stands? To reasons? Be right back googling. You should, too.) contemplation must be an everyday act, unless a barking dog is running after you. Thinking profoundly before we make make major decisions in life should be the norm. Sadly, my own experience and those of many divorced friends, shows thinking is done, but “profound thinking”? Not so much. (Fact from the infamous internet: 41% of first marriages end in divorce, 60% of second marriages end in divorce, and (bless their hearts!) 73% of third marriages end in divorce.) Don’t ask me…

Politics are where contemplation would be best practiced. All our politicians never seem to contemplate. Ask them a question and you get an immediate answer, either from memory, note binders, or teleprompters. (Are they Pre-contemplators?) Makes no sense, but the stupidest part is we, as voters, accept it.

Forgive me, it’s a beautiful morning and I made the mistake of trying to write something readable, here, before enjoying the sunshine. Should have thought more profoundly…