The Collapse CLIV: Argument

 07 August 20XX +1

My Dear Lucilius:

Our Summer continues to grind on; it is one of the hottest ones that I can remember for some years. Watering has become of critical importance (and, of course, takes far more time due to the increased amount). It also pushes up the start of the day as well as the timing of the day; as I may have mentioned before (and is very clear now), work after 1300 in the sun is sheer folly (especially given the fact that at least for the current time, anything remotely looking like skin cancer is going to be incredibly hard to to treat if at all – I have left my container of liquid nitrogen along with the rest of civilization). There are always things to fill the time, of course – but there is plenty of time to talk as well.

This day, I had the privilege of virtually refereeing a fight between Young Xerxes and Statiera.

I have never much probed into their relationship: prior to meeting Statiera it was never really my business what that looked like and even now, having married into the family, it remains at best an involvement where one has to be invited, not puzzle one’s way in. Nothing worse than in-laws overhanging every exchange of a relationship.

That said, Young Xerxes came over this afternoon in a huff as I was sitting under the trees in back, calculating out dry wheat weight per person. He sat there, obviously upset about something, while I finished out my calculation. Pompeia Paulina mysteriously disappeared without a trace in the interval so that by the time I looked back up, it was only Young Xerxes and myself.

I raised my eyebrow at him, which serves as a universal sign for “Tell me your issues”. Rather vociferously, he let me know.

The specifics of the argument are both unmemorable and not surprising to either of us who has been in relationships in the past; a small argument that got blown up into a larger argument because of the responses to each other until the words said in the argument became the point of the argument, not the original item. You recall; we have had conversations about such things impacting both of us in the past.

“Unreasonable”. That was the word that kept coming up. She was being unreasonable in the argument and his reasoning remained sound and should be the one that was listened to, because it was the logical conclusion.

We sat there under the tree, he continuing to pour himself out until, like a ruptured dam that had run out of spilled water, the words trickled off and I just listening, beating out a steady time with my pen and notebook. Finally – almost 40 minutes later by my pocket watch – he was done. The wind kicked up a bit, rustled the grain beyond us, drying our skins out with the same sort of force as the argument had dried out his emotions.

Finally I said “Is it worth it?

He regarded me oddly.

“Is it worth it?” I asked again. “Is winning the argument worth the rupture in the relationship it will bring?”

“But I am right!” he protested.

I nodded. “Set that aside for a moment. What you described as being “right” about is a pretty small thing in the scope of what we are living out now – incredibly small, from my point of view. Look at the bigger picture: if winning this meant you ruined the relationship with Statiera, is it worth it? Is the cost of the relationship worth the price of victory?”

He sat there, thinking in the sun dappled shade as the wind blew. He sat there as Pompeia Paulina smoothly drifted over, deposited water glasses in our hands, and disappeared again without a sound.

“I suppose not” he finally said, taking a long drink from the glass.

“Your choice of course” I responded, looking carefully at the glass rather than him. “But given the state of the world now, the last thing in the world you probably want or can afford is fracturing the most basic relationships that you have. Trust me when I say that the argument itself will be forgotten before long, but if you do not go back today – now – and make it right, the feeling of that argument will last forever. And that is something, I can assure you, you can neither afford nor want to live with.”

He sat there for some moments more looking into the glass then looked up at me, nodded, and got up, heading back towards the gate and his house. I sat there, looking at anything but his back as he left. When a man is in the process of being humbled, there is no need to rub anything else in.

A few minutes later Pompeia Paulina came out and sat in the chair that Young Xerxes had vacated. “All well?” she asked.

I nodded. “I think so. Young people being young people, thinking that being right is always more important that the relationship.”

She laughed. “Is that why you never argue?”

I shook my head and smiled. “It is more just being painfully aware of how incredibly wrong I usually am.”

It is easy to be a good companion, Lucilius, if one knows one’s own limits and values the relationship above all else.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca