atay

adobong atay

I love to eat “atay” even if a lot of people don’t and find it gross.

I guess it’s a given that we all have certain thresholds of tolerance and acceptance for almost anything. I may be crazy about “atay” while others find it so-so or disgusting, or you may love Bossa Nova music to the core while I find it a little boring. In one way or another, I may persuade you to eat “atay” but I could never teach you to love it like I do. Same goes to you who may insist that I listen to your Bossa Nova CDs but you can never insist for me to be crazy about it unless I, from the bottom of my heart, have grown to love it and be crazy about it. While we all know it would be lovely for both of us to be crazy about atay and Bossa Nova music at the same time, it just doesn’t work that way always. It’s either we both accept the fact that we have different tastes and still be around each other, or we grow apart because one or both of us cannot tolerate one’s taste for atay and one’s taste for Bossa Nova music. But of course, “atay” and Bossa Nova music are just way too lame an example.

Let me give you “values”, perhaps. I find it difficult to tolerate people who do not know where their loyalties lie, who do not know what “friendship” is even in kindergartens’ language, who smile, talk, and laugh with you but stab you behind your back, who wash dirty laundry in public (where’s the loyalty again), who pretend to be just innocently amoral (given their awfully sad past’s circumstances) but also busy being manipulative in the back of their minds. These are just some inconsistencies I can live without that I choose to just go away and leave. Is it really that difficult to accept and understand?

I have friends growing up. I didn’t just meet them somewhere and then just be friends. Don’t you think this should be in the checklist for a quick / late judge of character? Maybe yes, or maybe yes.