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Why Is It?

Why is it that fate has failed to connect me with a truly well suited companion? It's a mystery, because my needs are simple. I require just four basic human characteristics: (1) honesty, (2) decency, (3) cleanliness, and (4) intelligence intelligence assuming, among other things, an open and inquisitive mind. I don't mention good looks or wealth, which are nice qualities but, for me, not totally essential. I wonder why so many people on this planet get together with seeming ease and go on to live together in seeming harmony while I haven't even come close. For example:

Quite a long time ago I spent several months in companionship with a gentlemen friend; nothing serious, but I was between serious male friends at the time and he was available. My friend was in his mid-forties and well educated educated, it turns out, beyond his level of intelligence. I also came to realize the guy was lazy. By his own admission, he had attended university so he didn't have to find a job; thus he kept going to school year after year, and before he knew it he had acquired a PhD in psychology.

My over-educated friend resided in a modest cabin situated on a hilly lot that bordered a tributary of the Payette River a few miles downstream from Payette Lake in McCall, Idaho. For a few months we drove back and forth each weekend between my home in Boise and his in McCall, either separately or together. Our friendship began in the spring of the year, continued seamlessly through a pleasant summer, and ended in late autumn when the mountains took on their seasonal luster of crimson and gold.

Our companionship ended in much the same way companionships always seem to end for me. One sunny autumn afternoon as we were driving down the mountain from McCall toward Boise, the colorful foliage seemed especially resplendent, and I said, "Look at those colors along the river; aren't they glorious?"

Without taking his eyes off the road my friend mumbled, "Yeah, nice."

After a few minutes I said, "If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, why is it that some things are universally beautiful?"

My friend gave me a sidewise glance and said, "Huh?"

"Why is it," I said, "that everyone, almost without exception, can gaze at a lovely sunset or a magical sunrise and proclaim it to be a beautiful sight? I mean, look at that outcropping of rocks over there. Is that a beautiful sight? No it isn't. Hardly anyone would think that grey lump of rocks is beautiful or even nice to look at. So what it is that makes us see some things as beautiful and other things as unremarkable or downright ugly? It can't be our genetically ingrained spirituality, because all of creation, even the ostensibly unattractive, originates from the same source. So why are those luminous fall colors along the river more beautiful to us than those dreary grey rocks along the road?"

For a few minutes my friend said nothing. Finally he sighed, looked at me as if I had just sacked up my last row of potatoes for the day, and said, "Who cares? Where do you come up with those wacky thoughts, anyhow?"

I returned my friend's disdainful look with one of my own. He was neither rich nor handsome. He may or may not have been honest, decent, and clean. Maybe he was intelligent in his own way. But without an open and inquisitive mind, without one whit of intellectual curiosity, what good was he to me?

The following week I packed up and took a long trip for parts unknown.

Learn more about this author, Jeanne Clayton.
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