I recently signed up on OKCupid. I honestly did it out of pure and morbid curiosity, I found lots of people I know trying to be conspicuous about their user names or going on and on about their accomplishments on their profiles, and laughed about it for days. I also found some with really sweet things, which was, at times, surprising, but mostly cute.
I made my own profile and started getting messages instantly. I regarded it as nothing more than a boost for my self-esteem. This very morning I was talking about closing it, since I didn’t find anyone interesting on it, other than some possible designer hires… And then I got this one message, by far the best message I have ever gotten… Anywhere. The kind of message that shows wits, charm, interest, humor and the promise of a fun time, all in one. I’d go out with this guy in a heartbeat:
Ever heard of Sir Harold Acton?
No, probably not… I barely know about him and I lived in what used to be his house.But back in the day, everybody had heard of Harold Acton. The man was a known wit; what many regarded as the most clever, insightful, poignant and just plain interesting conversationalist.
His friends’ names have lasted through the ages: famous playwrights, authors, painters, poets, sculptors and whatnot.
By all accounts, Acton was no slouch either: maybe he was a quite prolific author himself.But yet Ezra Pound may ring a bell to some, but Harold Acton rings a bell to none.
Why is that?
I don’t know, but a friend of mine more familiar with Acton (actually, all my knowledge of Acton comes from this friend) had a theory:
The man was so charming, erudite and witty that he must have often heard from his friends “You should write a book!”Well, great conversationalists are not necessarily great authors. Sure, both can tell a tale- weave a yarn. But their mediums for delivering said stories are vastly different.
Why do you think Socrates never wrote?
But he spoke so beautifully that others wrote it down for him (paraphrased, I’m sure).Nobody did that for Acton, so his memory is lost from the zeitgeist.
Now, there must be a point to all of this, and there is… fo’ shoe.
As someone who describes themselves as “good at coaching and project management”, I’m in desperate need of some of those skills. If you sit me across in a cafe, I can regale stories of all sorts. But when it comes to pen and paper I get lost in my own thought process and never go where I want to end.It’s a metaphor, of sorts. All these plans, schemes, plots or (simply put) ideas are manifest in my conversations but become ethereal if I try to put my nose to the grind stone. I have one great accomplishment in life: somehow all the pieces came together after much hard work and I created something of beauty. It should also be telling that my greatest accomplishment is also my greatest failure.
So yeah, the point. It must be here somewhere.
A good coach could come in handy. I’m to scatter brained sometimes. Reality isn’t set. So it’s a constant state of flux.For example: I’d really like to ask you out for a cup of coffee.
or
Have some sort of rapport of back and forth here on this site.
or
Learn more about coaching/project management services.So the point is that there is no point. I do know you look pretty in your photos… but at the same time realize how lame it sounds. LOL.
Anyways, it was fun writing this.
P.S. I think it was Saint Augustine who said “A man who doesn’t travel is like a man who just reads the first page of a book”
IT WAS Saint Thomas Aquinas who said “Beware of the person of one book”
Put those two together, and it’s a pretty clever idea.
