Relationship
I find it funny that you wrote that you are not clear on what our “relationship” consists of. To me, this is the only thing that is pretty clear. Right now it still consists of waiting for an answer.
But that aside, our “relationship” has obviously not consisted of much else than the occasional “Happy New Year” or “Happy Birthday” message, although we both kind of missed the latter last time. (Did you read my belated birthday wishes here?)
Let me also clarify one thing: I don't consider “relationship” a very good concept. What is the ship? Where is it sailing? Who is steering it? Who is onboard?
Between two people there are only the different ways they relate to each other, so a much better yet more unusual term would be “relatedness”.
Now that we clarified this, the remaining unclarity is not as much how we relate to each other today, but rather how we did in the past and how we will in the future.
My hope is that we can still develop a friendship because I still trust you and I still value you and I still want you to live a good live.
But I also try to let go of hope as much as I can because I can see the absurdity of it
I don't need suspense, I don't need that feeling of desire being stuck.
I'm not even sure I need desire. But I'm sure I don't need misery.
What I need is honesty, radical honesty. Commitment. Commitment to development.
If we are talking about developing a friendship, it might be just the commitment to one conversation each year. One radically honest conversation we can both use to get an unbiased outside view on our lives, some counseling or just some attention. I appreciate having friends, no matter how many or how distant they are.
But if we are going to continue like we did in the two years since we last met, I suppose the only thing we are missing is a proper good-bye. We never had that.
I don't know how that could look like, but I guess it would be a sort of conversation.
And I guess it's why deep down I'm so afraid of a conversation with you.
Because there is a certain likeliness that this will be the outcome of it.
And hope is addictive. Certainty is not.
But I'm also sure that no matter what we end up agreeing on – whether we only check up on each other every ten years or never again or only if we need each other's help – it's going to be better than “not being clear what our relationship consists of”.
Sorry if any of this offends you or seems stupid. Keep in mind that I have a light fever and just jumped out of bed to write this. It's my brain overheating.
Maybe you have more ideas for how we could relate in the future, but I also want to emphasize one more time how I relate to you in the past.
If we live in a multiverse and there are versions of me who have never met you, I don't know if they're better off or worse off than me. But what I feel pretty certain about is that they lived very different lives since spring 2018.
Maybe I would not have become aware of my interest for spirituality in 2018 and also not for my interest in airplane design. Maybe I would not have started a project with Nils to design an electric airplane. Because one big motivating factor for making this crazy suggestion was that I wanted to show you that I'm living my life to my fullest potential.
It was an amazing year and I still don't understand how I could be so fixated on the idea of not tempting fate that I didn't tell you about the project until summer of 2019.
I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't waited for an answer from you at the beginning of January 2019 I would not have travelled to Israel.
Certainly I would also not have travelled to Madrid in autumn. I also would not have had the strong emotions I experienced there and maybe I would not have gotten sick in December. All in all, 2019 was a good year.
2020, the year of the pandemic, was calm at first but towards the end brought me to Norway – a place where I certainly would not have ended up if I hadn't started the project with Nils and if I hadn't tried to find the intersection between water and air, sky and ocean: seaplanes. It turned out most fascinating and I'm almost convinced that the whole thought of “I'm going to go to a seaplane company because I love airplanes and Gaby loves the sea” was just a way of the universe of bringing me back to some very old childhood fascinations.
So as usually with our brains, looking into the past it all seems to make sense, but looking into the future there's uncertainty lurking. Which is okay.
By the way, also my travel to Colyaer, the seaplane manufacturer in Spain, would not have been a thing if I had never met you, and this three week long travel was simply the best time I had last year.
Concerning the first half of this year: I filled a small notebook with logbook-like notes that I wrote mostly with you in mind. I don't know how that influenced my writing, but my idea was to send it to you at some point so you could read and comment on it. I never did, but I gave it someone else to read. It's also an interesting document for myself so if I send it to you because you request it, I'd like to have it back at some point.