WHEN THE HEART KNOWS BETTER
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An ESSAY on DESIRE and DIGNITY
EXAMPLE 1
THE FEARLESS FLIRT AT THE FARMHOUSE
It was at a friend’s country house, a place of some rustic charm and much generous hospitality, that I found myself standing by the bar, engaged in the simple and civil task of pouring myself a glass of whiskey. No sooner had I done so than a young lady, with the lightness of one accustomed to both attention and the art of acquiring it, made her approach.
Her manner was as unguarded as it was bold; indeed, before I could so much as enquire her name, she presented me with a proposition—one of mutual indulgence, free of ceremony and, it seemed, expectation of refusal.
I confess I was rather taken aback—not by the novelty of the suggestion (for the world is ever abundant in such offers) but by the candour with which it was delivered. Exercising, I hope, both courtesy and kindness, I declined her invitation as politely as words would allow, and wished her a pleasant continuation of the evening, trusting that the festivities would furnish her with merrier company.
I had not taken more than a few steps when her voice, quick and inquisitive, reached me once more. She wished to know, rather pointedly, whether it was she, in particular, who had failed to meet with my approval. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have dismissed so trifling an enquiry without reply. Yet, given the setting—my friend’s house, her status as a guest, and the natural demands of good breeding—I turned back to face her and assured her, quite truthfully, that the matter was not one of her person at all.
“Is it you, then?” she asked, pausing to raise her glass, the question hanging lightly between us, neither fully spoken nor entirely concealed.
“I am afraid it is precisely that,” I replied with a nod, “it is about me.”
“Are you?” she enquired further, the meaning of her words cloaked in suggestion, though plain enough to the understanding.
Once more, I extended to her my sincere wishes for an enjoyable evening, and, without further ceremony, I took my leave.
EXAMPLE 2
THE DIGITAL DELUSIONS OF MODERN COURTSHIP
A writer of my acquaintance, a man of both curiosity and craft, had come to visit from Bombay. He was, at the time, gathering material for a script — a study, so he claimed, of the temper and habits of modern youth. As part of his research, he had taken the rather unconventional but enterprising step of enlisting himself upon one of those now-fashionable digital marketplaces for romantic acquaintance, which I believe are commonly known as “dating sites.”
It was not long before the enterprise bore fruit, though perhaps not of the sort he had anticipated. The very first message he received was stripped of all preamble or pretence, and read — I quote him verbatim — “Hi, my parents not home for the night. Come, we’ll fuck.”
My friend, whose nature leans more toward the wry than the censorious, replied with as much composure as the situation allowed and enquired, not unreasonably, as to the young lady’s age. The answer arrived with the same disarming swiftness as the invitation: “I am 16, though I pose as 18.”
On another occasion, he was approached — or rather, electronically accosted — by a lady who, after showering him with the sort of extravagant praise modern self-advertisers often lavish upon strangers, proposed a meeting. When he suggested, with the quaintness of an older world, that perhaps they might first become better acquainted through conversation, she replied that she already knew him far better than he likely knew himself.
“My dear woman,” he wrote back, “and did you gather all this from the four lines of description I had so scantily provided?”
Her reply was as swift as it was self-assured: “Absolutely — just as you went weak in the knees for me, having seen nothing more than my sexy pictures.”
My friend recounted these episodes with great amusement, though beneath his laughter lay no small measure of sober reflection on the strange brand of narcissism and illusion that seems to have become the climate in which so many of the younger generation are now content to breathe.
Out of sheer mischief — and perhaps, I suspect, from the same scholarly curiosity that drives a naturalist to inspect the more exotic species — he resolved to meet this particular lady over coffee. The meeting was uneventful until, the coffee scarcely finished, she rather abruptly proposed they adjourn to her residence for what she plainly called “some fun.”
“But I had thought you professed not to be ‘that sort,’” he reminded her.
She giggled, rather like a schoolgirl who believes herself to have outwitted the master, and replied with devastating frankness: “You think we come online for conversation? Or to drink coffee with men? We join those sites only for sex.”
To underscore her point, she proceeded to make an unmistakable hand gesture — one which, though I shall not describe it here, left little doubt as to the nature of her proposition.
When my friend, exercising his usual self-command, politely declined, she cast one final dart: “You never mentioned on your profile that you were gay.”
At this, the absurdity of the entire encounter so overcame him that he burst into laughter — not the discreet, private chuckle of a man humoured by life’s oddities, but the deep, uncontainable kind that startled several nearby diners from their own conversations and left him, for a moment, the unwitting centrepiece of the room.
EXAMPLE 3
A PUBLIC DEBATE ON FIDELITY
Not long ago, while seated alone at a modest café, I found myself an unwilling audience to a conversation at the table beside mine — a conversation carried on with such volume and abandon that even the most disciplined ear could scarcely have avoided it. There sat two women and a man, their voices rising and falling with the unrestrained ease of those who mistake proximity for privacy.
The subject of their debate was, in essence, the age-old question of fidelity, though one suspects the term would have struck them as archaic, if not entirely foreign. One of the women, adopting the role of both tempter and philosopher, was endeavouring to persuade the young man that the marital vow need not stand in the way of what she coyly called “an affair.”
The man, for his part, appeared not wholly convinced — a refreshing, if fleeting, display of conscience. Time and again he offered the same quiet, almost plaintive protest: that he was, after all, married, and that such conduct would constitute a betrayal of his wife. But the woman, having armed herself with what passes in some circles for modern wisdom, countered with the assertion that human nature itself rendered such fidelity an unreasonable expectation, that no man was truly fashioned for monogamy, and that, in essence, the moral law ought to make accommodations for biology.
I could not help but notice — for their table was but a few feet from mine — that the man, though he listened, did little more than shake his head in quiet, persistent dissent.
Growing impatient with his obstinacy, the woman pressed the point with a bluntness that left little room for misinterpretation: “What is your problem, dear fellow? So long as you share your bed with your wife at night, and mine during the day, who need ever be the wiser, unless you choose to open your mouth?”
At this, the second woman — who until now had preserved a silence that might almost have suggested disapproval — chose at last to lend her voice to the chorus, adding with an air of worldly weariness: “She’s right, you know. Think of the variety. How long do you imagine you’ll remain content with the same woman? Sooner or later, the monotony will gnaw at you.”
The words, though crudely expressed, were not unfamiliar to me — the very same old argument, wrapped in the modern vocabulary of appetite and novelty, as though the pursuit of pleasure had ever been anything but monotonous in itself. I sat there, pondering not the brazenness of their talk (which the age, I fear, has taught us to expect) but the strange mixture of cynicism and credulity that could so easily persuade otherwise intelligent creatures to trade loyalty for mere distraction.
THE CRISIS OF CONTEMPORARY VALUES
These three episodes, modest though they may seem, serve as no more than the faintest reflection of the temper of our present-day society. It is difficult — perhaps even unwise — to pass a swift judgment upon such matters as being categorically right or wrong, for the age has grown so artful in blurring the lines between the two. Yet this much, at least, is certain: sex is not — and was never intended to be — the idle amusement or casual pastime it is so industriously advertised to be. It involves, invariably and inescapably, the entanglement of emotions and the engagement of human souls, not merely the mechanical coupling of bodies.
It is a singular marvel — or perhaps, more accurately, a singular tragedy — how every other printed page and every glowing screen now seems to busy itself with the overt dissection of sex: instructions on the “how,” speculations on the “what,” and an endless stream of opinions on the “why” and “with whom.” The imagery accompanying these lessons is so astoundingly explicit that it has, in a manner of speaking, burglarised the mystery that once graced the slow unfolding of courtship — the tender prelude before bodies intertwined not merely to gratify appetite, but to weave memories.
OF LABELS, IDENTITIES, AND THE BARKING OF DOGS
The word gay, too, has suffered a fate most curious. It has been stretched and strained, overused and over-applied, until it seems now to stand for everything and, thereby, nothing at all. Should a man or woman happen to be unmarried, the world wastes no time in concluding they must be homosexual. Should one, by some rare and commendable exercise of patience, refrain from flinging themselves into romantic entanglement for any notable length of time, society is quick to label them confused. If a marriage dissolves — and heaven knows how frequently that occurs in our age — the collective wisdom of the masses declares, with almost tiresome predictability, that one or the other party must have awoken one morning under the revelation that they were, in fact, gay, bisexual or fluid.
And if, by some old-fashioned stroke of integrity or self-respect, a man or woman declines the modern expectation of physical intimacy upon the very first meeting, the world, lacking any finer explanation, is content to stamp the label gay upon them — as though to abstain were itself an unnatural perversion.
In truth, the term has become little more than a hollow jest, a sort of social punctuation for conversations empty of understanding but full of noise. My advice, for what little it is worth, is that if you find yourself among those whom this idle speculation seeks to wound, you would do well to treat it as one treats the barking of village dogs at passing motorcars: the dogs may raise an awful racket, and expend their breath upon furious declarations, but the car — and indeed its passengers — remain untroubled, unmoved, and altogether indifferent to both the barking and the barkers.
THE TWISTING OF FEMINISM
Modern men, it would seem, are finding it increasingly difficult to adjust to the rather brazen forthrightness of the women of our age. The very same women who once lifted their voices against the injustices and oppressions imposed upon them by the male-dominated world, now appear — under the venerable and oft-abused banner of feminism — to have sworn themselves to unsettle the equilibrium of men’s lives. Much like the term homo, the word feminism has suffered from the modern malady of overuse and careless misapplication.
It was not, originally, a battle cry for domestic supremacy nor a license to parade one’s strength in the household; rather, it was a virtuous attempt to secure equality for women, particularly in spheres of work and social opportunity, where their merit had long been overlooked. A woman of sound mind and true independence scarcely requires the shelter of any such label to validate her worth. She knows her own mind, she walks her own path, and she wins her place in the world by her own talent. Yet, as is so often the case, common sense — a faculty tragically uncommon — has proven unequal to the task, and many have trampled upon the beauty of this once gallant idea, distorting its intention for personal grievance and gain.
Nature and evolution have, with quiet wisdom, assigned to us roles — both mental and anatomical — that fit our design, and whenever this ancient balance is tampered with, the world stirs in confusion and unrest, as we have seen with growing clarity over recent decades. Whether there is a remedy to such disquiet is uncertain, but I am reminded of my friend Mervyn, whose words, however inelegant, held the simple force of truth: “You know who you are, and what you are, so why the devil do you care about what anyone else thinks, dude?”
A CONFESSION OVER WINE
Not long ago, I found myself in conversation over a quiet drink with a friend — a lady long married, or so I had presumed, and a mother to two sons pursuing their studies in America. Though we had known each other for more than two decades, the occasion for personal confidences had never before arisen between us. It was quite out of the blue, then, that she turned to me with a measured caution and asked whether I did not miss the comforts of matrimony. I replied, quite truthfully, that I did not. Her next query, I suspected, was borne not of idle curiosity, but of some quiet personal wondering: why, after all these years, had I never married?
I answered her candidly: as I had never felt the tug toward procreation, I had thought it unwise in my youth to enter into marriage for its own sake. She listened with the faintest smile playing about her lips as her slender fingers encircled her glass of wine. Then, after a pause, she asked me whether, at any point in my life, I had ever been confused about my sexuality. There was in her voice a note of vulnerability — an almost unspoken self-doubt — and sensing it, I met her question not with evasion but with levity, asking if what she truly meant was whether I had ever watched gay pornography. She grinned and nodded in silent admission.
I told her that I saw no contradiction in being able to watch two women without protest and, by the same measure, feeling no particular distress if the same scene were played out between two men. “Really?” she asked, surprised. I explained that human sexuality, like so much else in life, rarely conforms to the fixed boundaries we like to assign it. The anxieties that plague us often do not arise from the thing itself, but from the imagined judgments of those around us.
THE PROBLEM OF NORMAL AND ABNORMAL
“Say I wanted to sleep with an animal,” she ventured suddenly, “would you, as a friend, object to it?”
“Who are you or I to object to what another person desires?” I replied. “Society would think it abnormal, wouldn’t it?” she pressed, revealing — with this single admission — that the true confession had been waiting just behind these questions.
I asked her, “Do you think so?” and for the first time, I saw an openness in her gaze that had not been there before. She shrugged her shoulders, unsure. I asked her once more, “What is abnormal?”
She hesitated, searching for words. “You know how people think you are strange if you enjoy things that aren’t considered normal,” she said at last. I told her that I had little interest in judging what was or wasn’t normal. As for myself, I added, I neither sought out such content nor was repulsed by it if it happened to pass before me. “So, being a heterosexual man, if I can make peace with the mere sight of it, why should it trouble you?”
She fell silent, deep in thought.
THE WEIGHT OF GUILT AND THE FREEDOM OF SELF-ACCEPTANCE
At last she admitted, almost as if she were unburdening a great weight, that on two occasions she had shared an intimate experience with another woman, and had enjoyed it — though the guilt of it had been gnawing at her ever since. I listened without interruption. After a pause, she asked whether I judged her for her confession. I shook my head.
“Why?” she asked.
I replied that while I was neither a psychologist nor a philosopher, I knew enough to understand that her guilt served no higher purpose. Why should it matter what I — or anyone else — thought? “We live in society,” she countered, “and we must think of that society. I have two teenage sons — what if they were to find out?”
I told her gently that her heart would lead her better than any external voice, and that her sons, by now, were surely old enough to understand. She gave a dry laugh. “You speak so freely,” she said, “because you are used to seeing women do such things on screen. But what about you men?”
I smiled at her candour. “What about us?” I asked.
“I wish men,” she continued, “could accept the fact that if they simply lent each other a helping hand, it would spare so many women from the burden of unwanted pregnancies and other complications. But men are so shackled to their notions of manliness, they miss out on the beauty of sharing something with another who shares their own anatomy.”
I could not help but admire her honesty. Then came the question I had, perhaps, been expecting all along: “Have you ever tried it?” she asked, stammering slightly.
I told her I had never known such a drought of women to warrant the experiment, but that if one day I were to feel hopelessly drawn to a man, I would follow that feeling without fear. “Wouldn’t you be afraid of the world’s judgment?” she asked.
I answered that she, too, had not been afraid when she gave in to her own feelings, despite any afterthoughts. She nodded. “Exactly,” I said, “and though I have never experienced such an inclination, and do not expect to, if ever the day came when I did, I should meet it as one meets all new experiences — without alarm, for it is only through the testing of boundaries that we truly come to know ourselves.”
She regarded me for a long moment, her expression hovering between surprise and contemplation. “I think I know myself,” she said at last, with a sudden show of confidence.
“Only the shallow know themselves,” I quoted Wilde, which made her blush and fall into a brief, thoughtful silence.
“This isn’t about me,” I said softly, resting my hand on hers to ease her confusion, “desiring a moment of softness when one is weary of the hard is no betrayal of one’s nature. You knew what you wanted, and you acted upon it. Be proud.”
Her eyes searched mine. “Yes,” I said, answering her unspoken thought, “the rest is just noise. Let it go.”
ON LOVE, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, AND MISUNDERSTOOD AFFECTIONS
The conversation then drifted to cinema. “What did you make of Brokeback Mountain?” she asked, as if trying to link her private concerns to something more universal. “The people I knew watched it in hushed secrecy.”
I laughed. “My dear, from where to where have you leapt! But since you ask: I thought it one of the rare films that treated the subject with dignity. Most people, on hearing the words homosexual or bisexual, think only of sex, spelled out in great neon letters. But orientation is not about sex alone. Brokeback Mountain was, to my mind, a story of love — and love, as I have always believed, is neither confined by gender nor limited by convention.”
She grew quiet, as if allowing the thought to settle.
“If one looks beyond the surface,” I added, “that film had more to teach us about the heart than many of the so-called moral authorities of our time.”
She gave a quick laugh. “You creative ones are quite the peculiar breed.”
“That we are,” I replied, setting down my glass.
She thanked me with warmth and ordered another glass of wine, and the conversation turned once more.
ON MARRIAGE, COMPANIONSHIP, AND KNOWING ONESELF
“Have you ever felt that you had any other problems — emotional or mental?” she asked.
I told her truthfully that I had never been burdened by such wounds, much as others might like to believe otherwise.
“Then why do you seem so cold and distant?”
I smiled. “I am cold and distant only until I know someone. Beyond that, I am anything but.”
“Wouldn’t that put people off?” she asked.
“Perhaps. But I’ve been fortunate to know the finest people I could have hoped for, so I suppose this temperament keeps the unworthy at bay.”
She nodded with understanding. “But we are older now, more certain, more fossilised. What if you never meet the right fit? Would you regret not marrying?”
I replied that marriage had never been so central to my life that its absence would cause my world to collapse. Even in youth, I had contentedly charted my own course. True, finding the right companion grows more difficult with age, but I was never rigid, only discerning. If ever I were to meet someone who was genuine — equally at ease in a ballroom as on a roadside, sipping tea — age would not be a barrier. And if I did not, I would feel no sorrow for the lack.
“So you don’t believe in permanence?”
“Does permanence even exist?” I asked.
She laughed and gave my arm a playful slap. I concluded, “I would rather remain happily alone than unhappily accompanied. And I dare say, that ought to be the rule for anyone.”
THE TYRANNY OF FAMILY PRESSURE
I have a friend — as dear to me as any brother born of the same mother. Our friendship ran so deep that, in the frolicsome spirit of jest, I would sometimes quip: if only one of us were to alter the unfortunate circumstance of our sexes, the tiresome waltz of finding the right woman would be solved in an instant. We could marry one another and spare the world — and ourselves — the whole weary business. He would laugh, as heartily as he always did, and in that same zestful vein, would reply that, were the transformation complete and the elusive female hormones to strip us of our mutual fondness, it would all end in calamity rather than bliss.
For many years, this friend of mine lived abroad. A migratory bird, he would return home with faithful regularity at Christmas — until last year, when he descended upon us not merely as a visitor but as a man freshly wedded. His announcement left our circle of friends as speechless as a congregation who has heard a most unexpected sermon.
“Is it the same young lady you were once so uncertain about?” I asked him, puzzled by the suddenness of it all.
“Yes,” he answered, with a disarming innocence, almost as though he’d forgotten the doubts he had once confided to us.
Time, it seems, is the great architect of human change, and we — knowing him as well as we did — resisted the temptation to draw hasty conclusions. Yet, I confess, curiosity bedevilled at me. A month after his nuptials, we met again.
“What on earth happened?” I asked, unvarnished and direct, for ours was not the kind of friendship that required the frills of formal civility.
His reply was unembellished, almost devoid of life. “You know how long my parents have been chasing me,” he said, “one night, a week before Christmas, my mother woke me at the ghastly hour of three. She said my father’s health was failing him, and the remedy, she believed, lay in my agreeing to marry the girl they had chosen.”
I wiped the sweat from my upper lip and held my tongue, but he noticed the gesture and scolded me for it. Our silence hung heavy and charged. At length, he added, “I told them I would consent, but only on the condition that if the marriage proved ill-fitted, I would not be held accountable for the consequences.”
Still, my vexation would not be pacified. “She is not someone I can hate,” he confessed, “but neither am I drawn to her. The very act that consummates a marriage eludes me, not out of will, but from the absence of desire.”
This, from a man I had always regarded as the freest of souls — one who would vanish at will, turning off his devices like one might turn out a lamp, and return when the world least expected him. No one could coerce him; only his own heart could move him. And yet here he stood, a captive of familial sentiment.
“Did it not occur to you, before embarking on something so reckless?” I pressed him. “You, who weigh every decision a hundredfold!”
He sat in silence, as still as stone.
“You know,” he murmured at last, “I have always been the sort who would lay down my life for the people I love.”
I struck him lightly but firmly on the chest. “And that,” I said, “is what astounds me — that you, of all people, would succumb to the tyranny of emotional blackmail.”
His head bowed, and he busied his hands with the salt and pepper shakers as if hoping they might deliver him from my reproach.
For the traditional-minded, his choice would doubtless be praised as honourable. But from a standpoint grounded in reason and human dignity, one ought to enter marriage only when heart and soul stand united in readiness — not out of obligation to others, however beloved. It is natural for parents to long for their children’s contentment, but too often this desire is but a thin veil for their own vanity, their fear of social judgement, or their unwillingness to let go.
And the truth remains: it is not only your own life you endanger when you yield to such pressure, but the life of another — a life entrusted to you, one that may be derailed simply to soothe your parents’ anxieties.
My friend, for all his haste, was no child, no green youth to be easily manipulated. Once he had spoken his assent, he could no longer hide behind the excuse of parental insistence. He leapt into deep waters, not for love, nor for hope, but merely to test the temperature.
Marriage is not a festive gathering, a fleeting moment of gaiety and admiration. It is, rather, a solemn covenant — a stewardship of another’s heart and future. To accept such a charge lightly is to court both sorrow and ruin. My friend, alas, learned this too late. For all his cleverness, he made a mistake so basic it has ensnared even the simplest of men: the illusion that one can please everyone.
Yet, I must end on this note: while I have spoken my thoughts with the liberty that true friendship allows, I know well that judgement belongs not to me, nor to any man, but to the inscrutable counsels of each human heart. And so, if I have sounded harsh, I beg forgiveness, for only he knows the full weight of the reasons that led him down this path.
A WOMAN’S ROLE: TRADITION AND MISCONCEPTION
One day, another friend — a woman — asked me, “When you grow old, who will cook for you? Who will care for you and tend the house?”
I was taken aback, almost amused by the narrowness of her question. “You are a woman,” I said, “and yet you reduce your own sex to the rank of servant — cook and maid?”
She tried to wriggle from the implication, taking a generous sip of her wine, and claimed that her meaning had been misunderstood. But the conversation had already strayed into deeper waters.
“That,” I replied, “is the great misconception: the belief that a woman’s role is to keep house and tend hearth. She may very well have no wish to cook, and I might find myself the one holding the ladle, not she. And what then? What, indeed, if the roles reverse?”
She rubbed her forehead, weary and a little conceding. “I see your point,” she said, “but this is how it has always been, since the dawn of time.”
I could only shake my head, still bewildered. “If I want a cook, I will hire one. If I desire a housekeeper, I shall employ one. You women spoil men and then complain when those same men, having grown fat on privilege, trample your freedom beneath their feet.”
She laughed, perhaps a little too readily, and asked, “Do you not miss having children of your own?”
“Children have always managed to annoy me more than they allure me,” I answered with frankness.
“That’s a harsh thing to say,” she replied, though without anger.
“A woman,” I went on, “even one who is clear in her mind that she does not want a child, may one day find herself prey to those age-old instincts. I was not prepared to take that chance.”
“You could have had yourself operated,” she suggested.
I smiled. “Yes, I could have. But as you well know, even that is not always permanent.”
THE CALM OF OLDER WOMEN AND THE WISDOM OF TIME
Another day, my friend Mervyn asked me why I had always been drawn to older women. I told him, simply, that I found in them a calmness — the quietude of one who has seen the world, and made her peace with it. Far better that than the feverish company of a young woman, all jealousy and pettiness, her soul as shallow as a teacup.
He nodded, and told me a story from his travels. While aboard ship, he had met two couples. One pair was in their nineties — two old souls who had never married, until fate introduced them in a park. There, in the autumn of their lives, they discovered in one another a connection deeper than any youthful infatuation.
The second couple were sweethearts once, married young and parted bitterly after five years. Each went on to marry another, but time, that quiet conspirator, led them back to each other after their spouses had passed away. They remarried, and at the age of eighty, found happiness more profound than ever.
I, too, recalled a little verse I had saved on my phone: “I’ve lost people and found them again. The second time around, things just made more sense. Honestly, timing has a lot to do with everything. Sometimes you aren’t ready for each other yet.”
Mervyn, touched by its truth, sighed. “If only people understood that.”
UNLIKELY MATCHES AND SOCIETY’S DOUBLE STANDARDS
In my own neighbourhood, a young man of twenty-five had once taken up with a woman twice his age. The tongues of the community wagged furiously, for such a pairing is a scandal to our hypocritical society. But what I admired most was their courage to follow their hearts, unmoved by the sneers of the world.
It has long been my belief that one must seek in a companion an intellectual, soulful, and — yes — physical harmony. Without friendship at its core, even the grandest romance crumbles like a house built upon sand.
THE HOLLOW PURSUIT OF CONNECTION WITHOUT EMOTION
And finally, I recall a chance encounter of my own — a girl I met at a party, one of those evenings where drink has a way of loosening both tongues and inhibitions. We retreated to a quiet room, where the game of seduction began, only for me to discover, to my own surprise, that desire would not answer her call.
My body, wiser than my mind, would not permit what my heart had not sanctioned. She, confused, asked me if I was unsure, or worse, if I was broken. But the truth is simpler than all that: I cannot lay with one to whom I am not bound, not by duty or desire, but by genuine connection.
I told her, as gently as I could, that if she were to stop treating her body as though it were a bauble to be bartered for temporary affection, she might spare herself the sorrows — physical and emotional — that await those who mistake freedom for license.
Her response was as sharp as a whip: “Get out.” But the point stands, and I would urge every woman, and every man, to remember: the world’s notion of ‘liberation’ often leads only to enslavement of another kind.
Be real. Be vigilant. And above all, be honest with yourself.
THE GENTLEMAN’S CODE: AN ENDURING IDEAL
I once chanced upon a note in The Gentleman’s Journal, a modest list that read: Doors. Seats. Jackets. Umbrellas. Simple things, you might think, and yet these unassuming gestures are the quiet markers by which the true gentleman is known. It is not the magnificent declarations, but these subtle acts of thoughtfulness that separate mere men from those of cultivated character. Be, then, the man who offers his jacket to a friend when the air turns bitter; be the one who lifts an umbrella over his mother’s head when the rain descends unbidden; and above all, be the man who, without waiting for witness or applause, holds open a door or relinquishes his seat — whether for the woman he loves or the stranger he has never met.
And if, in the present age — this coarse and often unlettered epoch — such deeds are met not with gratitude but with the sneer of suspicion, if the world in its crudeness mistakes kindness for affectation and decency for a sign of one’s sexual orientation, then so be it. Let the world indulge in its hollow jest. You be you: happy, undeterred, unashamed — while they remain as they are, neither happy nor gay, but simply adrift.
Yet let us not forget this truth: however far we may advance in our outward ways, however progressive the age declares itself to be, the bedrock of our value system must remain unshaken — rooted firmly in propriety and forged from the steady iron of character. Alas, it is the great misfortune of our times that this value-based compass, once so universally shared, has fallen into disrepair. Is it any wonder, then, that so many souls appear adrift, like ships without rudders, lost in the great sea of existence?
Rather than allow ourselves to be devoured by the same disreputable forces that breed such drift, let us, by quiet example, reintroduce into daily life the customs and convictions that once endowed man with dignity and purpose. Let us not be shaken from our gentlemanly manners, even when mockery stands before us grinning. Let us carry ourselves with grace, treating both women and men with equal courtesy, not for the world’s approval but for the quiet dignity of doing right.
Let us not wield our masculinity as a weapon to oppress or subdue, nor entertain the base and desolate notion that manhood entitles one to treat any being — human or otherwise — as a vessel for conquest. Let us resist the vulgar temptation to regard women as mere objects for gratification, for this is not the path of a gentleman, but of a fool.
Let us choose openness over prejudice, and understanding over scorn. Let us recognise the simple but oft-forgotten truth: some are drawn to women, some to men, some to both, and some to none at all. Such matters ought not divide us but rather humble us, for we are all creatures of complexity, shaped by forces seen and unseen.
And let us not exhaust ourselves trying to silence the many-headed inquisitors — the modern-day Briareus — who reach and pry into the lives of others, for their meddlesome nature is beyond our power to cure. Instead, let us strive to dispel ignorance, to unravel misconceptions, and to make space for kindness where once there was only judgment. Let us honour love in all its strange and splendid forms. Let us hold in reverence the quiet nobility of human emotion, for these invisible treasures are worth more than the outward details of whom one loves.
And so, my people, let us remember always: each soul is a unique note in the symphony of creation, and it is precisely this diversity — this splendid, baffling, and sometimes inconvenient variety — that renders the world so endlessly worth inhabiting. It is this that lends each of us a distinctive melody, and this that makes us worthy of one another’s respect.
Let us be, in all things, gentlemen.
