Leaving Good Company

Source: Focus Features/huagl.net

I have always believed that just as the presence of something is pleasant, the absence of it would be as much unpleasant and vice versa.

While this applies to many things, and almost everything for that matter, it holds true the most for good company.

Good company. Good is vague here, even misleading or inappropiate.

Enjoyable company perhaps.

This is a rarer commodity than you thought. Even rarer than happiness. Even though it is one of the most genuine sources of pure happiness itself.

Usually such experiences are the other way around. It’s mostly about repulsion. Maybe that is the way our world has been accidentally, or deliberately, designed.

So whenever you get a shot of this pleasure spirit, and are forced to retreat to your retreat, then you get a sweet-bitter hangover, rather a sweet-sour hangover, the likeness of which can never be offered by any other intoxicant.

Surely, good company, rather, enjoyable company, is different for everyone. And indeed it has everything to do with that particular person.

But I wonder if the perception of the experience is the same for everyone, and also the intensity of it.

It is one of the few happy sad things in life that you can actually take back home.

————

© 1999 Focus Features – Under Fair Use