So, you are not exactly my favorite person but that doesn't mean we can't be friends. Or acquaintances. Or people who have civil conversations when forced to sit next to eachtother and the next picnic or party or dark and crowded and loud strip club event where I'll make every effort to be civil. Not for the sake of you but for the sake of civility, something increasingly lost in our crude and selfish and rushed times when you figure that it takes more time to smile and nod than to grimace and look away and when everyones dirty laundry is expressed in open hostility and petty rivalry. when it grows and flourishes in the slow light of open exposure;
Understand, I am not a fan of secrets, but how and when one's dissatisfactions are expressed is a matter or delicacy. It's about manners. It's about kindness to those around fortunate (or not) enough to be privy to your dealings.
And I think about this. About doing things, not so much for the sake of the person as the art, not so much for personal actualization but to stay disciplined to the form. Maybe we must. It is what keeps us from devolving into squabbling chickens, prescribing the ugliest cut throat pecking order.
And so if I am rude to you. If I am hostile to you. If I am cruel to you or act inappropriately harsh or can not reign in my anger, frustrations or baser impulses, I am declaring a war not just on you, but on the very courtesies I hold dear. I am excusing myself from the society I wish to be a contributing member of.