"For my reason was aware that Habit - Habit which was even now setting to work to make me like this unfamiliar lodging, to change the position of the mirror, the shade of the curtains, to stop the clock - undertakes as well to make dear to us the companions whom at first we disliked, to give another appearance to their faces, to make the sound of their voices attractive, to modify the inclinations of their hearts. It is true that these new friendships for places and people are based on forgetfulness of the old; my reason precisely thought that I could envisage without dread the prospect of a life in which I should be for ever separated from people all memory of whom I should lose, and it was by way of consolation that it offered my heart a promise of oblivion which in fact succeeded only in sharpening the edge of its despair. Not that the heart, too, is not bound in time, when separation is complete, to feel the analgesic effect of habit; but until then it will continue to suffer. And our dread of a future in which we must forgo the sight of faces and the sound of voices which we love and from which today we derive our dearest joy, this dread, far from being dissipated, is intensified, if to the pain of such a privation we feel that there will be added what seems to us now in anticipation more painful still: not to feel it as pain at all - to remain indifferent; for then our old self would have changed, it would then be not merely the charm of our family, our mistress, our friends that had ceased to environ us, but our affection for them would have been so completely eradicated from our hearts, of which to-day it is so conspicuous an element, that we should be able to enjoy a life apart from them, the very thought of which to-day makes us recoil in horror; so that it would be in a real sense the depth of the self, a death followed, it is true, by resurrection, but in a different self, to the love of which the elements of the old self that are condemned to die cannot bring themselves to aspire."
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 721-722
Here Proust is once again reflecting on the the impact of Habit, but in this case its role in making the new ordinary and in the process forgetting the past, even those we held dear. "It is true that these new friendships for place and people are based on forgetfulness of the old . . ." I know I've talked to much about my decision not to go to Hong Kong, but this seems like such a natural place to revisit it. There were so many reasons why I turned down the position at Hong Kong University, mainly personal but some professional, and some still a mystery, but one of the biggest was my fear that I would lose some of my dearest friends. It's not that I was afraid, although the prospect of going alone wasn't nearly as inspiring as going with someone, but I just didn't want to lose folks who had become so central to who I was. And they would have faded away. Keep in mind that this was coming hard on the heels of me spending a year in Abu Dhabi, and it was both assuring and also disconcerting how quickly I had found new friends and a new love there. My old connections from Burlington were already becoming specters, and they would have disappeared completely if I had moved to Hong Kong. And so why didn't I just go? Well, that's a whole other question. Like I've said before, it was an adventure I would have undertaken alone at forty-two but not fifty-two. And why was I alone? I suspect the answer is somewhere inside of one of my favorite songs from Kathleen Edwards, Copied Keys: "these are your good friends, and I like them fine, they are your past and your present time, would you even be the same if you left them behind?"
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