KEEPING IT SAFE

     Some people avoid the personal at all costs. They converse on the level of history and politics and public information. Their passions circulate around social issues and disturbing things they have read about in books, or the newspaper. They seem to lack an instinct for intimacy. They are all guard and defense: highly competent in the art of distraction.
     Looking for love from these people is frustrating at best. It's better, perhaps, to cease expecting anything from them, and to join them in the realm of their carefully chosen safely discussible topics, and to have compassion for their limited ability to access the contents of their soul. These people love us simply by showing up and making conversation. For now, and maybe forever, it's the best they can do.

I accept people's differing levels of conversational comfort, and understand that the personal is too personal for some.