One of my best friends, Eric, is getting married this weekend. I am standing up, and one of the cats that I am standing up with is Aaron Scharmer. Heres the thing, I love Aaron today, but it was not always like that. While we were at the wedding rehearsal tonight I stood there and I learned my lesson while looking at Aarons back.
By now I would hope that you understand that the lesson triggered by Aaron has little to do with Aaron, but it comes to me inspired by my feelings in relation to Aaron. In contrast possibly. So, Aaron lovers do not worry, I love the guy with you.
When I met Aaron he was married, and I was working at the Pub. Aaron felt like all surface to me, a veneer of a person. Talk of jazz and pianos and all of this sort of thing. It was what I was fighting against, and I imposed it on Aaron, and by extension his wife at the time. I can point to others like this, my old friend Marcus Nelson, for a time Eric himself, and there were always others. These sort of polished cats who drove me nuts.
But tonight I was standing there talking to Aaron, and I realized that his personalilty had not changed. This polish, this was actually his substance. It was a cultivated and cared for image. Aaron is aware of it, and it communicates something about him, and that is his choice.
You see, for me, it has traditionally been black t shirts, tan pants or jeans, and skateboard shoes. I had existed on the pretense that this polish was false, and that it should not be a reflection of ME. Not me. I was beyond that. I was full of shit. I really was. I was communicating something, and what I was communicating was that I was a slob.
With my weight issues, these choices were sometimes out of neccessity, but all the time they were choices. I could have chosen something else, or even I could have chosen to not gain the weight.
There are reasons for the choices, for example I am very colorblind, so often chosing colors is tough. So I tend to chose basic colored pants, but the fact is I can really see now that I was and am a slob.
Aaron has depth in these choices, and I see my friend Jason through these eyes as well.
The appearance we chose communicates something, even if we do not mean it to. I think that I need to understand that. I need to care for my appearance better.