Equality

Equality to my mind has always been nothing more complicated, nor less simple than just two people.

Two people, sans the bells and whistles of the attendant circus of the rest of the world.

Two people who understand each other, who laugh together, who dream together, who walk, just walk together. Who are decent to each other, and good for each other. Who respect each other, yet make each other laugh. Who forgive, and are forgiven for their trespasses. Who may not think in perfect tandem, but are able to think together. Who share and communicate the truth, and are stronger for it together.

It's never had anything to do with power careers, with family status, with wealth or poverty, or even with perfect compatibility.

Perhaps in my youth I was extremely hung up on a more superficial equality, of thoughts, of minds, of humours, of wits, of communication.

It was because of Her, because we were similar - and I pegged equality as precisely that. Similarity; near clairvoyance, common language, common turns of phrase to the extent that thoughts need not be completed, that sentences could be read before they were spoken.

As I aged so too did my convictions - perhaps this is the vaunted maturity of years - and my convictions of steel, my black and whites melted into something... wiser.

And so it is that everytime I fall in love with someone - which happens rarely - I burn for equality, and it starts that way - it always feels like an equal. Because if it didn't, I know from experience now when to pull out and escape - Self preservation, and preservation of others.

My friends sometimes chide me after the fact for perceived "inequalities" or incompatibilities, but that's not the way it works at all.

The truth is, while I'm in it with someone else, equality is only about her and I. And only for her and I. Everyone else, family, friends, acquaintences.... well their opinions are important at some level of course, and it's important to hear them out. But really they really don't matter.

Equality only breaks down when either party in the relationship perceives it. Or when they prove it.

*****
"You two look good together."

A remark, from the blue.