There was a time when factors like the weather, or even other people’s moods and attitudes, would have had a big influence on Benny and his capacity to cope or otherwise. For example, it used to be that warmer hazy days were usually more conducive to his staying in a more open frame of mind, with colder damper weather having more of a hunker-down affect on his way of dealing with the world out there.
But lately, for things that can’t be helped, like the weather for example, since I’ve mentioned it, Benny had come to see that his approach to whatever was thrown at him, whatever came his way, was taken with a steadier view, no matter what the readings on the thermometer or the wind gauge. If he thought about it, which he didn’t, the fact that he would have once upon a time been emotionally influenced by these external factors would have seemed laughable.
But the moods and attitudes of other people, again since I’ve mentioned them, could still be another matter. Take for example the time recently when Benny, walking alongside a busy road one day, saw the person he was going to meet up with in about two hours walking along the same road but on the other side and going in the opposite direction. He waved and called out loudly in, he thought, an obvious way, but got no reaction, and seemed to have been ignored. He wasn’t exactly peeved, but thoughts of that other person harbouring some issue or other crossed his mind.
A couple of hours later and Benny was the first to arrive at the arranged time, and when the other walked in the first thing Benny noticed was him unhooking his earbud headphone wires from around the top of his ears. With slightly longer hair, the wires were not visible, and he also had them going behind a shoulder and around to a pocket, so his being wired for sound was not at all obvious. So there had been no ignoring being conducted, no slight involved, no issue or mood going on, just some good music to listen to and simple distractedness.
So that was cleared up, and Benny took it to be no big deal either way, although in here I could see that this highlighted again that there’s something to be said for not being swayed by external circumstances. Anyway, this witness and observer is necessarily separate, so an initial impartiality to what’s going on out there seems natural. It would pay for him to take that on board, and not be blown here or there by whatever arises.
| < Chapter 49 | Chapter 51 > |