In good company

I remember disagreeing with a friend once upon a very long time ago, seated in a very small chair in her South Kensington apartment that activities were less important than the company you kept.

She, the pint-sized energizer/stress bunny, hard drinking, party-animal with the minuiture furniture and tatami mat (presumably because she was already so near the ground when standing up that lying on a mat made sense) asserted that it was all about doing exciting stuff; nevermind who tagged along. (We travelled in packs in those days, it just wasn't the done thing to go on dive trips or ski trips alone.)

I remembered a then not-so-distant time when lunch / dinner conversation, or just talking on the telephone could be... just about magical, and maintained that in the right company it didn't really matter what you did, at all, and only that you did it together. To my mind it extended beyond romantic love between partners, even to agape love between friends. Company outweighed activity.

Time passed and the years came and went, and with each new relationship / parting it seems a part of me weathered away; with the last ex it became apparent that activities were extremely, extremely important; up to the moment of... near / indiscretion - confessed from her own mouth to have stemmed from boredom.

Through the looking glass, and out the other side - suddenly activities were far more important than company alone; it only seemed natural that the only way two people could endure the mundanity of everyday was an expensive getaway somewhere exotic once in a while, or an out-of-this-world special activity of some form... some form of spice to liven up life; otherwise everything becomes mundane, no? As comfortable as it is to rush home and die in someone's arms, or to go out to all those shops every so often and buy girly stuff, or to watch the odd movie, or the odd meal... it isn't enough. I lamented what all us foreign returnees constantly harp on about : there's nothing to do or see here, in Singapore, except eat, shop and... eat.

And then this past week, just lying with her head on your chest listening to her speak, or sitting across from her watching her eyes sparkling as we eat, that random argument from another lifetime comes back to mind, and something strange seems to have happened to time.